Luminet A wearable device that can hold hair during chemotherapy is getting the testing it needs to go commercial, but the startup is already looking toward its next goal: providing home-based care for cancer patients. A new $15 million funding round is expected to help it get off the ground.
This startup is one of the most unusual, but promising, companies we’ve looked at in 2021. The presentation sounds like science fiction: a helmet called Lily that people undergoing chemotherapy wear to prevent hair loss, a common side effect of the treatment.
It sounds magical, but it’s actually quite simple: By applying even pressure across the entire scalp, the helmet seals capillaries and prevents the toxic chemotherapy mixture from reaching the patient’s hair follicles. CEO and founder Aaron Hannon says this was enough to prevent 75 percent of people from losing their hair in the company’s first tests.
“Patients have completed four to 12 chemotherapy treatments and their hair has remained thick. There has been incredible feedback about how it has changed their experience of undergoing treatment,” Hannon said. Testing has also revealed few, if any, safety, comfort or device issues, and that wearing the helmet longer improves outcomes. That’s about as good as you can expect, but with so few patients, Luminate now has to ramp up its efforts for its U.S. debut.
“The next step is a multicenter study in the U.S. to get FDA approval there. New York, Florida, possibly Ohio — we’re enrolling sites that want to try the technology publicly,” Hannon said. The study will involve 85 patients for seven to eight months, possibly starting in November.
Luminate faces other challenges beyond the arduous FDA approval process, and its success in this oncology-adjacent field has shown its team new opportunities to help people with treatment.
Hannon said the team identified chemotherapy-induced neuropathy — damage to nerves in the extremities — as another common side effect that the same compression technology could reduce. It’s basically like a micro-compression sock or glove; those garments are already used to some effect, he said, but the wearables they’re working on do it in a more predictable and precise way.
Because it’s so close to Lilly conceptually, Lilac (as they call the combination) makes sense as Luminate’s next medical device; a lot of work has already been done. “It took us about two years to go from preclinical to completing the first clinical trial showing efficacy for Lilly; it took us a year for Lilac,” Hannon said.
This also fits into a larger long-term strategy and ambition: to help bring cancer care to the home.
Oncology relies heavily on specialized equipment that is typically found in care centers. But for many patients, going to the hospital is difficult, time-consuming, and even painful. Any care that can be done at home should be, but chemotherapy is impractical because of the way it is administered. Not only that, but pre-infusion blood tests and paperwork mean that a two-hour session can take four or five hours in total.
But with cancer being diagnosed earlier in life and treatment lengthening, care centers may not have enough seats to treat as many patients as they want in a timely manner (and delay has harmful effects). Short of building more chemotherapy seats at great expense, what can be done?
“Our broad vision right now is that we want to help deliver cancer treatments at home,” Hannon said. While that’s still a long way off, he said the company is working on a way to let patients do their own blood tests, pre-injection assessments, and actual chemotherapy.
Of course, this is nowhere near ready, and Hannon was clear that the company is in no rush to anything. But it is “building something to allow [patients] “We do our own blood draws, and then we look at how to do safe, low-complex chemotherapy at home. We’re looking at something like an automated injector to get into the ports under the skin.”
As home care for other chronic and acute illnesses becomes more common, Luminet hopes that home cancer treatment will become more realistic as companies invest in it.
Luminate will spend $15 million in a new funding round, a Series A led by Artis Ventures, with participation from Metaplanet, Lachy Groom, 8VC, SciFounders, Faber, and some individuals.
In the near term, Hannon said, the company will work to build out its clinical presence in the U.S., including testing teams, training, marketing, etc., as clinical trials here progress.