ICPO Foundation and NTP Radioisotopes SOC Enter Strategic Partnership to Promote International Education Standards and Support the Establishment of New Theranostics Centers Across Africa

2023-09-05

The overarching goal of the collaboration is to substantially increase patient access to advanced RPO imaging and therapies with a special focus on the African continent ICPO Foundation and NTP signed an agreement to advance education and infrastructure in RPO on the African continent through their collective medical and scientific knowledge and extensive networks. (Credit: CDC on Unsplash) The International Centers for Precision Oncology (ICPO) Foundation and NTP Radioisotopes SOC Ltd. (NTP) today announced a collaboration to promote international education standards in Radiomolecular Precision Oncology (RPO) and support the establishment and expansion of a global network of Theranostics Centers. The overarching goal of the collaboration is to substantially increase patient access to advanced RPO imaging and therapies with a special focus on the African continent. ICPO Foundation and NTP signed an agreement to advance education and infrastructure in RPO on the African continent through their collective medical and scientific knowledge and extensive networks. Together, NTP and ICPO will work on evolving best practice standards and utilize the ICPO Academy for Theranostics Platform to provide state-of-the-art education and training to healthcare professionals across Africa starting with South Africa as of September 2023 through a combination of the ICPO Academy e-learning platform and an on-site nursing nuclear medicine program. The ICPO Academy for Theranostics offers a combination of e-learning education with a multi-level qualification process, as well as tailor-made online courses providing application and equipment specific training. NTP intends to involve their international experts to help enhance the ICPO Academy for Theranostics as well as support evolving its content and country specific translations and certifications. Leveraging NTP’s industrial and innovation track-record in Africa, ICPO and NTP plan to furthermore work together in the establishment of a network of practical training centers across Africa, which will complement the e-learning platform with on-site training for the most qualified alumni of the ICPO Academy. Furthermore, it has been agreed to cooperate on expanding the ICPO Theranostics Center network to African countries where NTP is active, in order to provide patients with widespread and democratized access to RPO. The ICPO Theranostics Centers network is set up to serve as a crystallization point for medicine, academia and industry providing advanced RPO imaging and therapies to cancer patients worldwide and in the context of the NTP/ICPO collaboration especially the African continent. “Theranostics, having shown fantastic results in diagnosis and treatment of cancer will gain greater traction and patient access across Africa through the ICPO/NTP collaboration”, said Mr. Oliver Buck, Trustee of the ICPO Foundation. “We are very excited to join forces with our partner NTP to collaborate on providing standardized education and training to an increasingly significant number of clinicians across Africa, sharing globally standardized processes and in turn significantly increasing access for African patients to Radiomolecular Precision Oncology.” Mr. Thabo Tselane, Group Managing Director of NTP, commented: “We are delighted to launch this official partnership with the ICPO Foundation. We are happy to become advocates of standardized high-quality education of medical professionals in Radiomolecular Precision Oncology and thereby to substantially expand patient access within the growing African community. We are convinced that together we can now make an impact in countries across Africa where patients, still today, have little or no access to Theranostics.” Source: Company Press Release