Luminate aims to make hair loss from chemotherapy a thing of the past – TechCrunch

When Luminate CEO Aaron Hannon and his co-founder Bárbara Oliveira asked patients and doctors about areas of cancer treatment they could perhaps innovate in, “we were just astonished at how much hair loss dominated the conversation,” said Hannon. “So from then on out, we’ve just been laser-focused on making that something that doesn’t exist anymore.”

When a patient is undergoing chemotherapy, the course of the cancer-inhibiting drug through their entire body — anywhere the blood goes. This has various side effects, like weakness and nausea, and on a longer time scale, hair loss occurs as the substances affect the follicles. Luminate’s solution, developed in partnership with the National University of Ireland Galway, is to prevent the blood from reaching those cells in the first place.

The device that affects this is a mechanized compression garment for the head. If that sounds sinister, don’t worry — it uses only soft materials to achieve the pressure; Hannon says it isn’t uncomfortable, and stress is carefully monitored. There’s also no risk of damage from lack of blood flow in those cells. “Compression therapy has been well studied,” he said. “There are years of literature around how long you can apply these therapies without damaging the cells. A certain amount of mechanical engineering is involved in making it both comfortable and effective.”

The patient wears the cap during and after the whole chemo session. Restricting blood flow to the skin of the scalp only allows the drugs to flow unimpeded to wherever the tumor or cancer site is while saving the hair follicles from damage. Tests have been done on animals, which saw strong hair retention of around 80% with no adverse effects — and while complete human trials are something that will need some time and approval to set up, initial tests of the headset’s blood flow-blocking effects on healthy patients showed that it works exactly as expected on people as well.

“We’re excited about the efficacy of this therapy because it works with lots of hair types,” said Hannon. That’s a real consideration since a tech that only worked with short hair, straight hair, or some other subset of hairstyles would exclude far too many people. As for competition, although some new treatments cool the scalp instead of compressing it, Hannon noted that the most money is spent by far on wigs. An average of a thousand dollars per patient who opts for a wig means considerable leeway for a device in that neighborhood.

Although hair loss is considered a medical condition by many insurance companies and other reimbursement methods, and wigs are often covered, it will take time and lots of evidence to get Luminate’s device approved for those processes. But the team is confident that at around $1,500, the device is within the means of many as long as other costs are being picked up by insurance. If there were a “don’t lose hair” checkbox on the chemo forms with a $1,500 price tag, many people would check it without a second thought. After all, people spend that much on wigs and other h retention products and methods.

Ultimately, however, Luminate wants to offer the device to those who can’t afford the cost out of pocket, so they are progressing toward FDA approval and a U.S. launch, with Europe and others to come. So far, Luminate, just graduating from Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 batch, has been lucky enough to operate on funds provided through grants from the Irish government, which are non-dilutive. While more capital will almost certainly be required for scaling and international launch,t he team is curcurrentlycused on getting the device into the hands (and onto the heads) of its first set of patients.