On Sept. 22, 2016, Vanderbilt University Medical Center became the world’s first site to treat a prostate cancer therapy patient in the TULSA-PRO Ablation Clinical Trial (TACT). The TACT employed an emerging therapy that used MRI guidance and robotically driven therapeutic ultrasound to obtain precise prostate cancer tissue ablation.

Investigators, David Penson, M.D., MPH, professor and chair of Urologic Surgery, and Sandeep Arora, MBBS, assistant professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, treated the first patient Wednesday in Nashville, Tennessee.

Multiple sites throughout the United States, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Canada will also be participating in TACT, a prospective, single-arm pivotal clinical study of 110 patients to further evaluate the safety and efficacy of TULSA-PRO.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men, and patients often experience side effects such as erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence and bowel complications.

The results of a previous Phase 1 clinical study for TULSA-PRO, published in the September 2016 issue of European Urology, showed accurate ablation of targeted prostate tissue with minor impact on urinary, erectile and bowel function at 12 months.