TRUEinvivo
TRUEinvivo is revolutionising the success of radiotherapy treatments through its use of specially designed micro silica beads that can measure the exact dose of radiation a patient receives. The many advantages of this include better targeting of cancers, high confidence in dose accuracy, and a significant reduction in the damage of healthy tissue around the cancer. TRUEinvivo’s function does not just stop at medical applications however, the DOSEmapper™ technology has also been successfully used in nuclear areas, industrial applications, animal health, aerospace, blood banks and food irradiation.
TRUEinvivo’s technology has been truly environmentally friendly from the outset. Silica beads are completely environmentally friendly, the silica base is equivalent to sand and does not contaminate the environment.
In terms of social impact – Since COVID treatment centers are under additional pressure and there has been a move to reduce the number of treatment sessions and increase the delivered those at each appointment, which increases the risk for patients. TRUEinvivo’s products can safely administer the dosage, which has a significant impact.
2014
Start Date
Surrey
Location
3.5
Employees
£478k
Grants
£550k
Equity
The Journey
“With the funding from Innovate UK ICURe I was able to travel to all of the big conferences and radiotherapy centres around the world and talk to both customers and competitors. It gave me a deep understanding of the reality of the market far beyond everything I thought I knew from research papers.”
“Following ICURe I started doing more and more research trials in hospitals and clinical settings, publishing papers and presenting in conferences, because that’s the way a medical physicist accepts change. Currently in advanced countries, up to 30% of patients do not receive the right dose of radiotherapy within recommended accuracy of ±5%, which causes damaging side effects and failure of the treatment. Our technology has an accuracy of +/- 3%, which is game changing.”
“We grew the team to 7 people, bringing in these key hires to fill the commercial side of the business allowed us to secure the funding we needed. We have finished our prototypes and we need to get them to industrial quality standard and mass production. Then we can offer our measuring beads and the automated reader as a pair to hospitals, who can then start to use them autonomously.”
“We are now a team of 3.5 people as we look to secure investment (£1.2m – £2.5m), we continue to undertake research and will resume product development work once we have secured the next round of funds.”
Dr. Shakardokht Jafari, Founder and CTO, TRUEinvivo
Contact Form
Took part in ICURe
£35k from ICURe programme
First patent published
Second patent published
DOSEmapper™ & Automated Reader Patent granted in USA
Patents granted in Europe
Looking to raise £1.2m – £2.5m in investment
What companies had to say about the Innovate UK ICURe programme?
“I applied for the ICURe programme because I had discovered that silicon beads could be excellent radiation detectors with high precision dosimetry for radiotherapy patients. ICURe provided the help I needed to understand how I should go about commercialising my research. ICURe really opened my eyes beyond academia.”
Dr. Shakardokht Jafari
Founder and CTO, TRUEinvivo
Future Goals
Once TRUEinvivo has secured the next round of funding the team plan to bring the product up to industry standard and manufacture on a larger scale, potentially in Singapore.
The goal is to obtain the relevant regulatory approvals to enter the US, Asian and African markets. It has CE marking for the UK and European markets and needs to obtain FDA approval for the US and other regulatory approvals for other markets.