Medical technology firm RefleXion Medical has raised over $100m series C financing, which will be used to commercialize its biology-guided radiotherapy system (BgRT) for cancer treatment.

The financing has been raised under the Rise Fund global impact investment fund round led by TPG Growth.

The participants included T. Rowe Price Associates, China-focused healthcare investment firm GT Healthcare Capital Partners, existing investors such as Sofinnova Partners, KCK Group and Venrock, as well as corporate investors Pfizer Venture Investments and Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC.

During BgRT procedures, cancer patients will be injected with a PET (positron emission tomography) imaging tracer, which accurately identifies tumors.

Later, the firm’s technology directs therapeutic x-rays at one or more targets in real time based on the tracer signals.

The platform holds capacity to deliver higher doses of radiation to cancerous lesions than current systems with improved sparing of surrounding healthy tissue, said RefleXion.

RefleXion’s technology was also demonstrated to simplify and automate multiple elements of the radiotherapy treatment process.

PET tracers hold capability to identify the metabolic activity and other distinct biological characteristics of tumors such as specific biomarker antigens or even probe the immune system itself.

The firm’s BgRT therapy will use both anatomic (computed tomography) and functional (PET) imaging data to guide personalized radiotherapy.

RefleXion combines better PET imaging with stereotactic radiotherapy for enhanced localization and tumor tracking at the time of treatment delivery

RefleXion CEO Todd Powell said: “We believe many of the 600,000 U.S. patients with metastatic cancer each year could benefit from our unique ability to accurately irradiate multiple tumors in the same session.

“Another 750,000 U.S. patients diagnosed annually with early stage disease may benefit from our system automatically compensating for tumor motion while precisely targeting the disease.”

RefleXion founder and CTO Dr Samuel Mazin said: “The RefleXion system is the first and only one to have a patient’s tumors guide their own treatment and destruction.”

Image: Cancer cell in human showing abnormal cells. Photo: courtesy of Toeytoey / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.