Profound Medical and Telix link up on PSMA-PET and MRI prostate care

The two commercial-stage companies will co-educate physicians on combining PSMA-PET imaging with Profound's MRI-guided TULSA-PRO ablation platform.

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Three large monitors displaying medical imaging and data visualizations sit on a modern control desk in a brightly lit medical control room, with an MRI scanner visible through a glass partition in the background.

Profound Medical and Telix Pharmaceuticals have signed a co-education agreement intended to increase clinical awareness of how PSMA-targeted PET imaging and MRI-guided prostate ablation can be used together across the prostate care continuum.

The deal pairs Profound's TULSA-PRO platform, an MRI-guided, robotically-driven and incisionless prostate ablation system, with Telix's two FDA-approved PSMA-PET agents, Gozellix and Illuccix. Planned activities include participation in scientific society meetings, key opinion leader programmes, educational summits and the development of clinical case study materials. Neither company disclosed financial terms.

The clinical case

The rationale rests on a well-established characteristic of prostate cancer anatomy. Profound's chief technology officer, Mathieu Burtnyk, noted in the release that approximately 85% of prostate cancers are multifocal, involving two or more distinct lesions. PSMA-PET can help identify whether disease has spread beyond the prostate gland, which matters for patient selection: candidates with occult metastases may not be appropriate for a focal or whole-gland ablation procedure, and identifying them earlier could avoid futile treatment.

Beyond selection, Profound is developing PSMA-PET to MR image-fusion functionality for a future release of its Treatment Delivery Console software. If cleared, the feature would allow PSMA-PET diagnostic data to be incorporated directly into TULSA-PRO treatment planning alongside real-time intraoperative MRI, a workflow the company characterises as more precise than ultrasound-based registration systems used by some competing platforms.

Arun Menawat, Profound's chief executive, said the agreement increases access to urologists across the US and internationally and could strengthen the clinical and economic value proposition of TULSA-PRO centres over time.

Market context and competitive landscape

The agreement reflects a broader trend in urology oncology: the integration of molecular imaging into minimally invasive local therapy pathways. PSMA-PET has gained significant clinical traction since the FDA cleared Illuccix in 2022 and subsequently approved Gozellix. Uptake has accelerated as urologists and radiation oncologists seek better staging tools at initial diagnosis and biochemical recurrence.

TULSA-PRO competes in a field that includes high-intensity focused ultrasound devices, cryotherapy systems and robotic-assisted surgical platforms. None of these currently offer native PSMA-PET image fusion for intraoperative guidance, and if Profound can deliver that capability through its TDC software update, it would represent a meaningful point of differentiation at a time when treatment centres are weighing capital expenditure on MRI-compatible ablation infrastructure.

Telix, meanwhile, is building commercial momentum from its diagnostics franchise to fund a late-stage therapeutic pipeline, including a pivotal trial of its lutetium-177 prostate cancer therapy. Co-education agreements of this kind cost relatively little to establish and can seed referral relationships that benefit both the imaging and the therapy side as theranostic workflows mature. Investors in both companies will watch whether the partnership progresses from education to a more formal clinical or commercial integration, and for data from any future registry or prospective study linking PSMA-PET-guided TULSA procedures to patient outcomes.

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