It's Lit! Lightpoint Lights it Up.

Lightpoint Medical seals an $8m dollar round and targets further expansion and distribution into the US and Europe.

We are very happy to announce that one of our earliest investments have now completed an $8 million financing round!

Lightpoint Medical is developing miniaturised imaging and sensing tools for intra-operative cancer detection. The company is addressing the urgent medical challenge that despite technological advances in robotic platforms, surgeons lack the tools to accurately detect cancer intra-operatively. As a result, cancer is often left behind or more healthy tissue than needed is removed, increasing the need for adjuvant therapies, causing post-surgical complications, and escalating healthcare costs.

By exploiting advances in miniaturised sensor technologies and the development of cancer-targeted diagnostic imaging agents, Lightpoint is developing miniature tools appropriate in scale for minimally-invasive and robot-assisted surgery to accurately detect cancer in real-time intra-operatively. The aims of the tools are to aid surgical decision making, improve patient outcomes and save costs for healthcare systems.

Basically: Pre-surgery, patients are injected with… let’s call is “cancer juice” that binds to cancerous tissue. The SENSEI probe then detects the cancerous cells via the injected drug and sends the surgeon audio feedback to guide the robotic surgery arm. It can then be sliced off accurately, greatly reducing the possibility of over or under cutting.

The funds are earmarked for further development and roll-out of this SENSEI®, which was recently approved for sale by regulators in the US, EU and Australia. The first commercial focus is prostate cancer surgery with a planned expansion into other solid tumour types.

Find out more at www.lightpointmedical.com and www.senseisurgical.com, or you can watch a demo here. You should also definitely check out our interview with the founder, Dr. David Tuch here!

Artwork by Raphaelle Macaron.