Image Credit: Coherence Neuro
Coherence Neuro was originally incorporated as Opto Biosystems Ltd in in Cambridge, UK on March 17, 2022 by Drs. Ben Woodington and Elise Jenkins. It describes itself as a medical technology company developing implantable neurotechnology that can record electrical activity and deliver targeted electrical modulation as a new bioelectronic approach to cancer care. Their flagship system is SOMA-1, presented as an MRI-compatible, minimally invasive brain–computer interface intended to be implanted during existing neurosurgery to monitor and treat gliomas in real time.
A Neurofounders article, described how Coherence wants to measure neural activity patterns, specifically the rate and structure of neuronal firing, and use those signals to infer how the tumor is interacting with surrounding neural circuits and how it is changing over time. The stated clinical vision is that continuous sensing could provide clinicians with higher-temporal-resolution information about progression and response than current workflows, which often depend on scans spaced months apart.
The same piece lays out three therapeutic “lanes” for stimulation:
- Direct effects on tumor cells. Coherence argues that because fundamental cellular behaviors tied to growth involve bioelectric phenomena, targeted electrical modulation might suppress proliferation, in effect pushing tumor cell behavior in a less growth-favorable direction.
- Modulation of the tumor microenvironment and neural inputs. A second approach is to influence the local ecosystem around the tumor, including neuron-to-tumor interactions and downstream signaling. The article highlights the idea that neural activity can promote tumor growth via neuromodulatory signaling, and therefore that disrupting or reshaping those activity patterns could reduce pro-growth cues.
- Immunomodulation. The third pathway is to use stimulation to shift local immune activity in and around the tumor. In the Neurofounders account, the aim is to tune immune responsiveness in a way that could, at least in principle, make some tumors more amenable to immunotherapy strategies.
Coherence Neuro believes that the same concepts could be applied to cancer in other parts of the body, and they mention in their website that they have started to investigate the use of SOMA in pancreatic cancer.
Their published patent application is understandably high level, and it does not clearly identify the specific neural biomarker they plan to track or the stimulation patterns they believe will meaningfully disrupt tumor progression. I am interested to see how this translates in practice, but I will look to controlled clinical data before drawing conclusions.