U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves Tumor Treating Fields in recurrent GBM.

On April 8, 2011, Novocure’s Tumor Treating Fields delivery system, then referred to as the NovoTTF-100A System and now called Optune^®, was approved for recurrent GBM patients in the U.S. This milestone marked Novocure’s first commercial approval for a cancer indication. At the time, Novocure’s Executive Chairman Bill Doyle described the approval as “the culmination of 10 years of research, development and clinical trials conducted by an exceptional team of scientists, engineers and clinicians, and built on the original insights of our founder and Chief Technology Officer Yoram Palti.”

Alyssa Vinas joined Novocure five years before the FDA approval in recurrent GBM as a Device Support Specialist (DSS), providing technical support on Novocure’s cancer treatment to clinical trial patients and their caregivers. Alyssa, who joined Novocure as a recent college graduate and built her career at the company, recalled thinking about the possibilities for Novocure if it received a first FDA approval.

“I remember feeling when we got that FDA approval, that moment of, ‘We've made it,’” said Alyssa, now U.S. DSS Manager of New Indications. “We did something truly groundbreaking in oncology, in the world of medical devices and in brain cancer, specifically. I knew in my heart that it was only going to go up from there.”

“We did something truly groundbreaking in oncology, in the world of medical devices and in brain cancer, specifically. I knew in my heart that it was only going to go up from there.”

        —Alyssa Vinas,
           U.S. DSS Manager of
           New Indications