Kheiron’s $22 million Series A funds early breast cancer detection for women worldwide

Kheiron Medical Technologies, an applied science company focused on innovating cancer diagnostics through machine learning, announced a $22 million Series A round led by Atomico with participation from existing investors Connect Ventures, Greycroft, Hoxton Ventures and EXOR Seeds.

Early cancer detection is paramount for patients’ prognoses, but diagnosing cancer remains a time-consuming, expensive, and stress-ridden task even for the most experienced radiologists. That's why Kheiron Medical’s approach is “to ensure reliably improved patient outcomes and safety by helping doctors in their daily practice,” says CEO Dr. Peter Kecskemethy.

The company’s first product, a machine learning software called Mia™ is designed to analyse standard Full Field Digital mammography (FFDM) images in a breast cancer screening. Ultimately it assists radiologists in making a crucial early call: to further evaluate a patient or not.

The software has demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in a multi-centre clinical study and was voted Best New Radiology Software 2019 by leading radiology publisher AuntMinnie. Kheiron will use the funds to further scale the clinical validation of Mia™, confirming its effectiveness and safety via large-scale clinical trials and roll-outs in Europe, the United States, and Asia.

Commenting on the investment, Kheiron CTO and co-founder Tobias Rijken says, “Clinical rigor is at the heart of everything we do. It is one thing to create an algorithm, and entirely different to make it useful in clinical practice when patient lives are at stake. The key to helping radiologists diagnose breast cancer more accurately for the benefit of women everywhere was finding investors who understood how to safely validate and scale products for global impact. The team at Atomico has a wealth of experience doing this at companies such as Skype, Uber, Spotify and Virgin and we could not be more pleased to be working with them on this important problem.”

Irina Haivas, a Principal at Atomico who is joining Kheiron’s board, said, “We invested in Kheiron because we believe they have one of the best machine learning teams in the world but also because they have such a deep understanding of radiology and the clinical validation required in order to usher in this new era of cancer diagnosis and care.”