BAMF Health - Ferris Partnership Will Bureaucratize New Cancer Therapy

BAMF Health, a Meijer Foundation funded start up, is now teaming up with Ferris State University to create the marketing, certification, documentation, and educational packages required for BAMF's "theranostics" cancer treatment system.  BAMF jumped ship from MSU sometime over the last five years, but that story is not yet available.  The BAMF-Ferris partnership is a creative way to get one unit of government to run interference with all the other other units of government for your new technology:

https://www.crainsgrandrapids.com/news/health-care/bamf-health-ferris-state-university-form-training-partnership/

BAMF Health, Ferris State University form training partnership
By Mark Sanchez - March 22, 2024

A new partnership between BAMF Health and Ferris State University aims to create a talent pipeline of people to work in the emerging field of theranostics.

Under the agreement signed today in Big Rapids, the Grand Rapids-based BAMF Health and Ferris State committed “to explore collaboration in a variety of areas to grow and enhance Michigan’s workforce.” Their specific goal is to train a future workforce in theranostics, an advanced cancer treatment that BAMF Health provides at a clinic in downtown Grands Rapids.

The partnership also will involve Ferris State providing continuing education for BAMF Health employees.

BAMF Health founder and CEO Anthony Chang described the arrangement “as combining the two great organizations (that) share a similar mindset of wanting to make the world a better place, and to see how we can lead the world and set a model to a really achieve that.”

“This partnership is not only trying to set a pipeline and new program to actually generate next-generation talent that this work is going to need very, very soon, but also this program and partnership is going to show the world how industry and the university can work with each other to tackle the problem we’re facing,” Chang said. “There is a lot of possibility in front of us. So, this program is going to curate a lot of next-generation leaders to show us the things we don’t even think are possible and that this is just the start good.”

BAMF Health opened a theranostics clinic in August 2022 at the Doug Meijer Medical Innovation building on Michigan State University’s research campus in downtown Grand Rapids. The clinic diagnoses and treats patients with prostate and neuroendocrine cancers using advanced high-speed medical scanners, radiopharmaceuticals and artificial intelligence to precisely target tumors and with minimal side effects.

Since launching, the clinic has delivered 600 therapeutic doses to patients.

BAMF Health wants to develop other theranostics clinics around the country, starting in Detroit. The budget for the state’s present 2024 fiscal year included a $20 million line-item appropriation to support BAMF in opening a Detroit clinic.

“These things are not easy. These things take a group of people who are determined and passionate in order to make things happen,” Chang said. “Like we always said, people make things happen — period.”

BAMF Health employs 120 people, about 15 of whom are Ferris State graduates.

University President Bill Pink called the contingent of Ferris State alumni who work at BAMF Health “one of the cool factors” of the new partnership, which “just makes all the sense in the world.”

“One of the things I always talk about is that when you have two powerful brands that come together, there’s nothing they can’t do, and so the two brands that we have coming together in a formal way gives us great opportunity and attraction to be able to say, ‘What’s next? What can we do, whether it be for the city of Grand Rapids in West Michigan, whether it be as Ferris State and BAMF start going across the state to Detroit? What does that look like in our partnership to carry to the great people of Detroit and Southeast Michigan?” Pink said as he and Chang signed the partnership agreement. “But also, what does it mean for us and how we as a university can be responsive to the needs of them as they think even wider than just the state of Michigan?”

The partnership between Ferris State and BAMF Health includes forming certification programs in quality control and assurance and regulatory affairs, and nuclear medicine technologists. They also plan to create “student experiences and research opportunities” and “ways to improve patient experience and program thinking,” according to today’s announcement.

BAMF Health also will work with Ferris State’s College of Pharmacy and other academic programs to train employees and students who are considering entering the theranostics field.

“This partnership connects so many dots for our university’s numerous stakeholders,” Ferris State Provost Bobby Fleischman said. “From our alumni working at BAMF Health, to our students and faculty who will work together at the company’s cutting-edge facility, this represents one of our strategic pillars — and that is innovation. Taken together with our applied learning approach to instruction, it distinguishes Ferris graduates from others as they graduate to the tech-focused workforce in West Michigan and throughout the state.”