RefleXion Medical has raised more than $100 million in a Series C round of funding for the development of the first and only biology-guided radiotherapy system (BgRT) for targeted cancer treatment.

The system is designed to irradiate multiple tumors in one session, a feature that RefleXion estimates will benefit many of the 600,000 U.S. patients diagnosed with metastatic cancer each year as well as increase access to care in underserved areas that lack trained technicians and qualified staff.

"Conventional radiotherapy systems are primarily focused on treating individual, solid-tumor cancers,” RefleXion Medical CTO and co-founder Sam Mazin told HCB News. “RefleXion's technology will be able to treat that disease while also expanding the addressable patient population by treating metastatic disease, which involves multiple tumors throughout the body.”

The World Health Organization predicts that more than 13 million global cancer deaths will occur in 2030, a number which the BgRT system is predicted to help reduce, partially by simplifying and automating the radiotherapy treatment process.

The procedure will start out with a PET imaging agent administered into a patient to identify tumors, sending off signals to RefleXion’s technology so that it may direct therapeutic X-rays to one or more of these malignancies in real time.

This will enable the BgRT system to deliver higher doses of radiation than conventional systems and spare a higher amount of surrounding healthy tissue.

In addition, it will also be able to automatically compensate for tumor motion while precisely targeting the disease, a feature that according to Todd Powell, president and CEO of RefleXion, could lead to the annual diagnosis of 750,000 U.S. patients with early stage diseases.

"The funds raised will set the stage for commercialization of our unique system. That includes manufacturing, facilities and staffing in areas of marketing, sales and service" he told HCB News.

Funding for this round was led by the Rise Fund, the global impact investment fund managed by TPG Growth, marking its first investment in health care technology.

Contributions were also made by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc.; China-focused health care investment firm GT Healthcare Capital Partners; Sofinnova Partners; KCK Group; Venrock; Pfizer Venture Investments; and Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC Inc.

RefleXion Medical expects to be treating U.S. patients by mid-2019.

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