San Francisco-based Coherence Neuro has raised $45 million in Series A funding co-led by Founders Fund and the OpenAI Startup Fund to develop implantable technology designed to monitor and potentially treat cancer through electrical signals.
New investors include Lux Capital, 8VC, Timeless, Olive Capital and Ahren. Existing investors Blackbird, Possible, Topology, Artesian, XEIA, Xtal and Divergent also participated.
The company was founded in 2022 by Ben Woodington and Elise Jenkins, who met while pursuing doctoral research at the University of Cambridge.
Coherence is developing a fundamentally different approach to cancer monitoring.
Traditional oncology relies heavily on imaging, biopsies and other periodic measurements to assess whether a tumor is growing, shrinking or responding to treatment.
Those methods provide important clinical information, but they do not continuously observe what happens between appointments.
Coherence is exploring whether electrical activity associated with tumors and surrounding tissue can provide a more immediate measure of disease progression.
Its research focuses on electrical biomarkers, patterns in neural and tissue activity that may correlate with tumor growth and treatment response.
The company has developed miniature implantable devices that record electrical signals near tumors and transmit information for analysis.
Machine-learning models process those recordings to identify changes and estimate how a tumor may be evolving.
In preclinical studies involving mice with brain tumors, the company reports training models capable of predicting tumor growth trajectories from recorded neural activity.
The research also compared untreated animals with those receiving temozolomide, a chemotherapy drug commonly used in glioblastoma treatment.
The longer-term ambition is to develop closed-loop cancer therapy.
Instead of only recording signals, an implanted device could potentially deliver electrical stimulation intended to influence tumor activity. Algorithms would use subsequent measurements to adjust treatment.
This remains an experimental approach, and Coherence has not established that its proposed closed-loop therapy improves cancer outcomes in humans.
The company has begun limited human testing.
According to reporting by WIRED, its implant was briefly tested during brain tumor surgery in three patients at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia. The device was inserted for approximately 30 minutes and then removed.
Further research involving seven additional patients is evaluating recording and stimulation capabilities.
The new funding will support the company's first longer-term human trial in patients with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
Coherence also plans to seek FDA Breakthrough Device designation and expand preclinical research into pancreatic cancer and other tumor types.
The participation of the OpenAI Startup Fund reflects growing interest in combining machine learning with technologies capable of measuring biological activity directly.
However, Coherence says its investment arrangements do not provide OpenAI access to patient brain recordings or other sensitive health information.
The company's challenge is scientific as much as technical.
Electrical patterns observed in animal models must prove reliable in humans, and any treatment system must demonstrate safety and clinical benefit through appropriately designed studies.
Implantable medical devices also face demanding requirements around biocompatibility, long-term reliability, surgical risk and regulatory approval.
The potential opportunity is significant: continuously monitoring disease could allow clinicians to identify changes earlier and evaluate treatment responses more frequently.
But the technology remains at an early clinical stage. Coherence's next milestone is proving that its electrical biomarkers provide meaningful information about cancer progression in patients, rather than merely demonstrating that tumor-associated signals can be recorded.