In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at cancer treatment breakthroughs from ESMO, a high-tech chair that could revolutionize cancer radiation therapy, AI chatbots for seniors, a startup applying ride-share mapping to healthcare navigation, and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.
Illustration by Philip Smith for Forbes
Loneliness is a mounting crisis for the elderly, with about one-third of U.S. adults between ages 50 and 80 feeling isolated, according to a national study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That comes with associated health risks, from depression to heart disease, that the healthcare industry isn’t prepared to manage. Enter a new crop of AI startups that are looking to build a business on the urgent, but vaguely dystopian, idea of solving loneliness with chatbots.
One of these nascent startups, Meela, which has $3.5 million in seed funding, enables “friend-like” conversations with AI for $40 a month. Among its customers: elderly residents of retirement communities, like RiverSpring Living in the Bronx. Another one, InTouch, uses AI to pull from a bank of 1,400 existing prompts to encourage seniors to talk about their early lives and favorite hobbies.
Despite the potential for long-term conversations with AI companions to lead to troubling outcomes, the market for AI in aging and elder care is growing fast. It’s expected to reach $44 billion this year (including AI-enabled devices and applications beyond chatbots), up more than 20% from last year’s $35 billion, according to Research and Markets.
“The first humans that actually live with an AI and are building a long-term relationship are not like geeks in Silicon Valley,” said Dor Skuler, founder and CEO of startup Intuition Robotics. “It is older adults in the United States.”
Read the full Forbes feature here.
How A High-Tech Chair Could Revolutionize Cancer Radiation Therapy
For decades, Stanford Health Care had been trying to install a state-of-the-art proton therapy machine to add to its array of high-tech cancer treatments. But try as it might, it just couldn’t find a place to put one.
Proton therapy machines, which deliver targeted radiation to cancerous tumors, are massive contraptions. They typically need a facility the size of a three-story football field to accommodate them and buildout costs are similarly gargantuan: between $50 million and $100 million. Even for a prestigious institution like Stanford, the hurdles to installation were daunting, particularly given Palo Alto’s pricey real estate and lack of space for such construction.
Three years ago, Stanford found an alternative: Startup Leo Cancer Care had developed a variation on the standard proton therapy machine design. Instead of rotating the radiation beam around a patient laying flat in a bed, it designed a chair in which a seated patient rotated around the beam. That seemingly simple change had transformative consequences. It helped trim the space required to about 1,700 square feet from more than 29,000 square feet–a more than 90% reduction. That made it significantly less expensive and easier to fit where they wanted it, even with the extensive radiation shielding proton therapy machines require.
Stanford teamed up Leo Cancer Care, which makes the chair and imaging technology, with Mevion Medical Systems, which had developed a small proton accelerator, and in 2024 they started building out the new facility. Stanford professor of radiation oncology Dr. Billy Loo hopes that its use will help Stanford’s doctors treat cancers more effectively with fewer risks. “The concept is very simple, but the implementation is quite sophisticated,” Loo said. “It has a huge impact.”
It’s early days for Leo Cancer Care still and this is a hard and capital-intensive business. But the West Sussex, U.K.- and Middleton, Wis.-based company, which has raised a total of $150 million at a valuation of $280 million, including a recent $40 million round led by Catalio Capital Management, is gaining traction. It started signing up customers even before it received FDA clearance for its flagship product, called Marie (after Nobel laureate Marie Curie), that combines an upright patient positioning system and a CT scanner, in July. Revenue reached $11 million last year, and is expected to more than double this year. Cofounder and CEO Stephen Towe hopes to reach $200 million in revenue within three or four years, and said that Leo is “actively pursuing an IPO,” perhaps as early as late-2026, depending on market conditions.
Read more here.
BIOTECH AND PHARMA
Pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers presented crucial data on cancer treatments at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin this week. Here are a few of the top findings:
mRNA vaccines. Moderna posted early data for a clinical trial of its mRNA cancer vaccine with Merck’s cancer drug Keytruda in melanoma patients. The vaccine trains the immune system to kill tumor cells and tumor suppressor cells, eliciting a 60% disease control rate. Meanwhile, the MD Anderson Cancer Center found that patients who received an mRNA COVID vaccine within 100 days of beginning cancer immunotherapy were twice as likely to survive three years compared to patients who did not.
Ovarian cancer. Startup Faeth Therapeutics reported that a phase II study of its drug sapanisertib combined with chemotherapy helped ovarian cancer patients survive longer with 34% reduction in the risk of progression compared to chemo alone. The company plans to move forward with a phase III study. Merck presented data on its investigational antibody-drug conjugate, raludotatug deruxtecan, co-developed with Daiichi Sankyo. A phase II/III study of the treatment found that tumors shrank in just over 50% of patients with ovarian, peritoneal or fallopian tube cancer. Another Merck study, this one of Keytruda plus chemo, showed prolonged survival times and 30% reduced progression risk in ovarian cancer patients. Merck’s studies come as it faces the looming loss of patent protection for Keytruda, which accounted for nearly $30 billion in revenue last year.
Breast cancer. AstraZeneca presented strong results for its breast cancer drug Enhertu in two clinical trials. The first trial showed that 67% of patients with early-stage disease had a complete response versus 56% on standard treatment. In 81% of post-surgery patients who took the drug, there was no residual cancer compared to 69% in the standard treatment group. The second trial found that 92% of early HER2-positive breast cancer patients receiving the drug survived cancer-free after three years compared to 84% of those receiving standard treatment.
Cancer detection. Diagnostics company Grail reported that its Galleri test, which is used to detect multiple cancers, was three times more likely to find breast, cervical, colorectal and lung cancers when used in conjunction with standard screenings than those screenings alone. The company said it plans to use the data for its FDA premarket approval application.
DIGITAL HEALTH AND AI
Startup Sage Care – with founders from rideOS and Carbon Health – came out of stealth with $20 million in funding to build an air-traffic control system for healthcare. The company’s software aims to make it easier for patients–and healthcare systems–to navigate the rat’s nest of healthcare navigation, including booking appointments, referrals and messaging, to get the right patient to the right appointment at the right time. Its customers include Jiva Health, a multi-specialty medical clinic in California; Bronson Healthcare, a large health system in Michigan, and White Plains Hospital in New York.
Read more here.
Plus: OpenEvidence’s Daniel Nadler is $1.3 billion richer in just three months as the AI startup hits a $6 billion valuation. He now tells Forbes his ultimate goal isn’t just to help doctors find existing medical research, but to create medical superintelligence.
MEDTECH
GE Healthcare, one of the world’s largest medtech companies, announced partnerships with Queen’s Health Systems in Honolulu and Duke Health in Durham, N.C., to develop its AI-driven operations software at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas. The company also unveiled five new artificial intelligence research projects as part of its AI Innovation Lab, launched last year, including developing an agentic AI diagnostic imaging assistant that it could incorporate into devices.
Plus: A pivotal stage clinical trial of brain computer interface company Science’s retinal implant found that it restored vision in 80% of advanced macular degeneration patients. The company has applied for regulatory approval in Europe.
PUBLIC HEALTH AND HOSPITALS
Health insurers including Cigna, UnitedHealthcare and Oscar Health are expanding their Affordable Care Act plans with more geographies and plan options in the individual insurance marketplace despite the U.S. shutdown over tax subsidies that make these health plans more affordable. Oscar, for example, will offer plans specifically designed for people with chronic conditions as well as for women in perimenopause or menopause. Open enrollment for the plans will begin November 1. The cost of these plans could increase by 100% or more if Congress doesn’t extend the tax credits beyond this year. In fact, higher ACA plan prices recently became public in a dozen states.
Plus: The New England Journal of Medicine and the Centers for Infectious Disease Research and Policy teamed up to publish public health alerts in an effort to create an alternative to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The MMWR has been published since 1952, but trust in the publication has been shaken under Trump.
WHAT WE’RE READING
A new conspiracy theory has taken hold at RFK Jr.’s HHS: chemtrails–the false idea that airplane vapor trails, which are primarily composed of water, actually contain toxic chemicals.
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said his Cost Plus Drugs will partner with TrumpRx.
Private-equity giants Blackstone and TPG agreed to buy Hologic, which sells diagnostic services to test for diseases that include breast cancer, for up to $18.3 billion–the largest such take-private deal in the healthcare sector since 2006.
As pickleball has gained popularity, ERs are seeing more players with eye injuries, such as retinal detachments, from the sport.
The Indian government refused drugmakers’ requests to extend a year-end deadline to upgrade their factories to WHO standards. The mandate was put in place in 2023 after contaminated cough syrup led to the deaths of more than 140 children.
California launched affordable state-branded insulin at $11 per pen. The drug is being made under an agreement between nonprofit generics manufacturer Civica and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw’s Biocon Biologics, a leader in generic insulin based in India.
Startup HistoSonics, which is developing a system to use ultrasound to destroy tumors, raised $250 million from investors that include Bezos Expeditions and Thiel Bio. The company declined to disclose the new valuation, but a management-led buyout in August valued it at $2.25 billion.