Imaging diagnostics company Magnetic Insight today announced $17 million in Series B funding led by Celesta Capital, with participation from Alumni Ventures Group, Gaingels, and others, along with existing investors 5AM Ventures and Sand Hill Angels. The funding will support Magnetic Insight’s continued growth and expansion of its innovative Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) technology into clinical applications.
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MPI is an emerging clinical imaging modality that allows clinicians to directly monitor a cancer patient’s cell therapy location, migration, persistence, and quantity to inform clinical decision making. By directly imaging cell therapy in each patient, MPI captures cellular-level information unavailable from conventional imaging modalities, including CT, MRI, or nuclear medicine. This new information lets MPI offer what no other imaging modality can: the ability to monitor a costly cell therapy directly and inform physicians on the best clinical management.
Magnetic Insight’s goal is to offer clinicians a method to directly monitor cell therapy, enabling better and earlier clinical decisions, and optimal clinical outcomes. Their initial clinical application will focus on using MPI technology to monitor cell therapy (e.g., CAR-T, NK) in cancer patients. Cell therapy has fundamentally changed the cancer treatment landscape, showing impressive results in blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. Unfortunately, the solid tumor landscape has proven more challenging due to an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment that frequently excludes or inhibits cell therapy. Currently, there is no direct imaging method to monitor cell therapy localization in solid tumors to predict and monitor treatment responses.
“Bringing MPI to the clinic is where we will get to see this phenomenal technology flourish and directly impact patient outcomes,” said Patrick Goodwill, CEO, CTO, and Co-founder of Magnetic Insight. “The targeted and high contrast images from MPI will enable clinicians to see where cell therapies are falling short in the treatment of solid tumors and to adjust treatment regimens accordingly.”