A new prostate cancer treatment at Houston Methodist is enhancing the system's patient care. Getty Images

As the top ranking hospital in Texas and one of the biggest employers in Houston, Houston Methodist Hospital is poised to treat the thousands of Texan men who will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year.

Building on its legacy of delivering advanced cancer treatment, the healthcare giant is one of the first hospitals in the United States to offer men a benign approach to treating localized prostate cancer, using high intensity focused ultrasound, or HIFU. HIFU is a minimally invasive procedure that allows patients to maintain their quality of life with potentially fewer side effects.

Changing the standard of care

For decades, men diagnosed with prostate cancer have had three ways to manage their disease. The first is watchful waiting or active surveillance. Prostate cancer is often slow growing and may not impact the patient during his lifetime. Despite reassuring data in large randomized trials, some patients are still uncomfortable with a diagnosis of cancer and prefer treatment.

On the other end of the spectrum is the complete treatment of the prostate, which involves either surgically removing the entire organ (radical prostatectomy) or radiation, which can last up to eight weeks, with five rounds of treatment per week. Both treatments are known to cause long term erectile dysfunction and incontinence.

But for men diagnosed with localized prostate cancer, this new HIFU treatment bridges the gap between these three approaches. Unlike diagnostic ultrasound, which people are more familiar with, HIFU uses high-frequency sound waves to heat up and burn cancerous tissue, causing cell death. Think of holding a magnifying glass above a leaf on a sunny day. The sun's rays shine through the lens and cause the leaf to burn.

New and improved

Courtesy of Houston Methodist

With HIFU, the urologist destroys the cancerous tissue without damaging other surrounding structures, which include nerves, blood vessels and muscle tissue. While HIFU has only been able to treat the entire prostate or large areas, Houston Methodist has a new technology, called the Focal One, that can zero in on specific areas to treat. The doctor can draw precise contours around the diseased tissue, destroy only that portion of the prostate and minimize any damage to surrounding tissue. This further decreases the possibility of incontinence and erectile dysfunction.

A competitive edge

Focal One gives Houston Methodist Hospital urologists the ability to plum the depths of something until recently considered heresy. The possibility of focal therapy to ablate only the diseased portion of the prostate is similar to performing a lumpectomy to remove only the diseased tissue of the breast in breast cancer. And focal therapy still leaves doctors with the options of radical surgery or radiation, should the cancer return. They don't necessarily burn any bridges.

Although focal HIFU treatment is available around the world for localized prostate cancer and studies in Europe have demonstrated its safety and efficacy, there are no long term follow up data in the U.S. at this time. So far, treatment complication rates in HIFU have shown to be as good as or better than other therapies. But urologic surgeons in the US generally need 10 years of data to establish focal therapy as a standard treatment, which is why it is important for cancer centers that embrace HIFU to enroll patients in an ongoing registry trial.


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Brian Miles, M.D, is a practicing urologist and professor of urology at the Institute for Academic Medicine at Houston Methodist.

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Nominations are now open for the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards

Calling All Innovators

Calling all Houston innovators: The Houston Innovation Awards return this fall to celebrate the best and brightest in the Houston innovation ecosystem right now.

Presented by InnovationMap, the fifth annual Houston Innovation Awards will take place November 5 at TMC Helix Park.

The awards program will honor the top startups and innovators in Houston across 10 categories, and we're asking you to nominate the most deserving Houston innovators and innovative companies today.

This year's categories are:

  • Minority-founded Business, honoring an innovative startup founded or co-founded by BIPOC or LGBTQ+ representation.
  • Female-founded Business, honoring an innovative startup founded or co-founded by a woman.
  • Energy Transition Business, honoring an innovative startup providing a solution within renewables, climatetech, clean energy, alternative materials, circular economy, and beyond.
  • Health Tech Business, honoring an innovative startup within the health and medical technology sectors.
  • Deep Tech Business, honoring an innovative startup providing technology solutions based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges, including those in the AI, robotics, and space sectors.
  • Startup of the Year (People's Choice), honoring a startup celebrating a recent milestone or success. The winner will be selected by the community via an interactive voting experience.
  • Scaleup of the Year, honoring an innovative later-stage startup that's recently reached a significant milestone in company growth.
  • Incubator/Accelerator of the Year, honoring a local incubator or accelerator that is championing and fueling the growth of Houston startups.
  • Mentor of the Year, honoring an individual who dedicates their time and expertise to guide and support budding entrepreneurs.
  • Trailblazer, honoring an innovator who's made a lasting impact on the Houston innovation community.

Nominations may be made on behalf of yourself, your organization, and other leaders in the local innovation scene. The nomination period closes on August 31, so don't delay — nominate today at this link, or fill out the embedded form below.

Our panel of esteemed judges will review the nominations, and determine the finalists and winners. Finalists will be unveiled on September 30, and the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards winners will be announced live at our event on November 5.

Tickets will go on sale this fall. Stay tuned for that announcement, as well as more fanfare leading up to the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards.

Nominate now:

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MD Anderson launches $10M collaboration to advance personalized cancer treatment tech

fighting cancer

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Japan’s TOPPAN Holdings Inc. have announced a strategic collaboration to co-develop TOPPAN Holdings’ 3D cell culture, or organoid, technology known as invivoid.

The technology will be used as a tool for personalized cancer treatments and drug screening efforts, according to a release from MD Anderson. TOPPAN has committed $10 million over five years to advance the joint research activities.

“The strategic alliance with MD Anderson paves a promising path toward personalized cancer medicine," Hiroshi Asada, head of the Business Innovation Center at TOPPAN Holdings, said in a news release.

Invivoid is capable of establishing organoid models directly from patient biopsies or other tissues in a way that is faster and more efficient. Researchers may be able to test a variety of potential treatments in the laboratory to understand which approach may work best for the patient, if validated clinically.

“Organoids allow us to model the three-dimensional complexity of human cancers in the lab, thus allowing us to engineer a powerful translational engine—one that could not only predict how patients will respond to therapy before treatment begins but also could help to reimagine how we discover and validate next-generation therapies," Dr. Donna Hansel, division head of pathology and laboratory medicine at MD Anderson, added in the news release. “Through this collaboration, we hope to make meaningful progress in modeling cancer biology for therapeutic innovation.”

The collaboration will build upon preclinical research previously conducted by MD Anderson and TOPPAN. The organizations will work collaboratively to obtain College of American Pathologists (CAP) and Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certifications for the technology, which demonstrate a commitment to high-quality patient care. Once the certifications are obtained, they plan to conduct observational clinical studies and then prospective clinical studies.

“We believe our proprietary invivoid 3D cell culture technology, by enabling the rapid establishment of organoid models directly from patient biopsies, has strong potential to help identify more effective treatment options and reduce the likelihood of unnecessary therapies,” Asada added in the release. “Through collaboration on CAP/CLIA certification and clinical validation, we aim to bring this innovation closer to real-world patient care and contribute meaningfully to the advancement of cancer medicine."