Calgary, AB (September 22nd, 2006) — Ontario researcher Stuart Foster has revolutionized medical research with his invention of an ultrasound microimaging system.

The Vevo 770™, produced by VisualSonics Inc. of Toronto, Ontario, allows medical researchers to track what's going on inside a living mouse, as it happens and in exceptional detail. Laboratories on four continents are using the microimaging system to test drug therapies and to study mammalian development, heart disease, and cancer.

Foster is the Chief Scientific Officer and Chairman of the Board of VisualSonics, a spin-off company that he founded in 1999 based on his research team's microimaging work at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto.

In recognition of his latest innovation, Foster, a pioneer and world authority in ultrasound microimaging, has won the 2006 Manning Award of Distinction, sponsored by CanWest Global Communications Corp.

Foster explains that because mice share 95 percent of their genes with humans, the mouse is an excellent model for pre-clinical research. "We need a good model system and it has to be a living system," he says, "...it can't be cells in a dish, it has to be something that's alive and has the normal physiology of a mammalian organism."

The Vevo 770™ is non-invasive, so researchers can use it to humanely view tissue changes and blood flow in the same mouse over many weeks, instead of sacrificing mice at time-points throughout an experiment. Researchers can, for example, track the effects of genetic changes in a mouse from its early development as an embryo through to its adulthood.

The images are displayed in real-time, allowing researchers to work quickly, monitor injections, and follow the course of drug treatments targeted to specific genes or proteins. "It's very interactive," says Foster.

In developing the Vevo 770™, Foster and his team at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto had to design a system that could handle extremely high frequency sound waves in order to achieve a high level of resolution. The system images structures thinner than a human hair, such as the blood vessels on a mouse-tumour. Conventional human imaging systems, including medical ultrasound, magnetic resonance (MR), and positron emission tomography (PET) operate at ten times the scale of the Vevo 770™.

Major drug companies, such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Glaxo, are using the Vevo 770™. So are biomedical researchers at Harvard University, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University in the United States; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; and Canada's Université de Montréal and the University of Calgary. There are a number of the systems in Toronto.

Foster says it is very satisfying for him to see the many applications of his ultrasound microimaging system. "It seems to be something that quite a few people have adopted and started to do interesting things with," he says. "It just seems that its time has arrived."

This year, the Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation will award a total of $165,000 in prize money. Four awards, totaling $145,000, will go to leading Canadian innovators. Another $20,000 will go to Young Innovators with winning projects at the 2006 Canada-Wide Science Fair.

The winners of the 2006 Manning Innovation Awards will be announced throughout September. All will be honoured at the annual gala awards dinner, September 29th, 2006 in Calgary.

The Foundation was established in 1980 in the name of prominent Alberta statesman, Ernest C. Manning, to promote and support Canadian innovators. Since 1982, the Foundation has presented over $3.6 million in prize money through its annual awards program (www.manningawards.ca).