Berlin, 21.01.2008. The Institut Curie in Paris, the leading French research and cancer therapy center treated it's 1.500th prostate cancer patient with Eckert & Ziegler BEBIG seeds in late December. This new treatment offers high efficiency and especially low side effects, utilizing millimeter-sized, low radioactive implants. These implants are produced by the Berlin based company Eckert & Ziegler BEBIG GmbH, a subsidiary of Eckert & Ziegler AG (ISIN DE0005659700).
"We are successfully treating patients with seed implantation since 1998. It is an excellent choice for the treatment of the localized prostate carcinoma", explains Prof. Jean-Marc Cosset, leading physician at the Institut Curie. "Our patients also profit from significantly lower incontinence and impotence rates at equal curing rates, compared to a surgical intervention", he adds.
Around 135,000 new diagnoses are made in Europe every year. In the USA, seed implantation is already used as a standard therapy - one third of all prostate cancer patients are treated with this method. For a list of centers that provide this therapy in Europe, please see www.bebig.de. In Germany, in-patient seed brachytherapy has been included in the insurance companies' catalogue of refundable procedures since January of 2004.
The Institut Curie (www.curie.fr) is a private foundation of recognized public utility since 1921 with 1500 employees working in two areas of activity: The research center, which is dedicated to basic research in oncology and composed of 12 units associated with either the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) or the INSERM (Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale); and the hospital which is dedicated to cancer diagnosis and treatment, attending 7500 new patients each year.
The Board of Directors