Irish founded company Luminate Medical are set to provide an innovative treatment that will prevent hair loss from occurring in cancer patients.
The device has already been trialled on healthy patients in University Hospital Galway and it is hoped that the device will eventually receive FDA approval in the US.
The project was motivated by the insecurities cancer patients experience while suffering from hair loss.
“We had the chance to sit down with people who had been through breast cancer treatment and talk to them about their experience. It became so clear that hair loss is this thing that people have such terrible experience of going through. It really took away from their ability to heal in private,” Aaron says.
Chemotherapy targets all rapidly growing cells in the body, even those that are not cancerous, such as those in the stomach’s lining and hair roots. Hair loss can occur all over the body as a result. Lily will prevent an area that typically is not affected by cancer from suffering chemo’s adverse side effects.
The device, a compression cap, works by applying pressure to the entire surface of the scalp. It prevents chemo from going into blood vessels near the hair follicles and therefore interrupts the process of hair loss. Scalp cooling is currently the main treatment used to tackle chemotherapy-related hair loss, but this method often causes significant pain.
Lily has been designed with patients in mind and is partially a response to a focus group that Aaron’s team set up at NUI Galway.
Aaron works alongside co-founders Bárbara Oliveira and Martin O’ Halloran, who have backgrounds in cancer research and medical devices respectively. They began the process of developing Lily after focus groups revealed that many patients felt further isolated from their families and communities after experiencing hair loss.
Luminate Medical is also keen for the device to be made as accessible as possible to the general public and aims for it to be used in public healthcare settings.
The European testing of the device is set to be followed by a clinical trial here in Ireland at University Hospital Galway.
Further information on Lily and Luminate Medical is available here.
