Galway firm Luminate Medical plans to change how cancer patents experience treatment
Luminate Medical, the Galway-based creator of a device that prevents hair loss during chemotherapy, has received a major financial vote of confident from US investors. Luminate Medical is developing Lily, a personal massage cap patients take to chemotherapy. It gives the scalp a pressure massage during treatment, reducing blood flow in a way that protects the follicles from chemotherapy exposure. Once the body has processed the medication, flow is slowly restored to the scalp to feel the follicles as usual. Three private finance vehicles – Elkstone Capital, SciFounders, and Faber VC – have put up a total of $5 million so far, according to forbes.com. Luminate is scheduled to treat its first patients this year in Europe and is still confirming the final dates, for a controlled pilot study in the autumn. Its goal would be to submit for regulatory clearance to market the device to any patient in the US at the end of 2023. The company was founded in 2018 by Aaron Hannon, Dr Barbara Oliveira and Professor Martin O’Halloran while they were medical device researchers at the National University of Ireland, Galway. After developing the technology through pre-clinical and clinical studies with healthy volunteers, the company was funded by Y Combinator and Enterprise Ireland’s Disruptive Technology Innovation Fund. Luminate is currently recruiting R&D engineers to join the team at its Galway office, and anticipates expanding its US workforce in late 2023 as it prepares for US regulatory clearance. 
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