Leo Cancer Care Raises $65M Series D Following World-First Upright Proton Therapy Treatment at Stanford Medicine
核心洞察
Leo Cancer Care (搜索) closed an oversubscribed $65 million Series D financing led by Yu Galaxy (搜索) with participation from Eventide Asset Management (搜索) and existing investors.
Stanford Medicine delivered the world's first compact upright proton therapy treatment on June 4, 2026, treating a seven-year-old child with a complex brain tumor (搜索) using the Marie® platform.
The upright patient positioning approach enables proton therapy treatment rooms approximately five times smaller than conventional gantry-based systems, allowing installation within existing radiotherapy vaults.
Leo Cancer Care (搜索), a medical technology company redesigning cancer imaging and treatment around the body's natural upright position, announced today the close of an oversubscribed $65 million Series D financing. The round was led by Silicon Valley's Yu Galaxy (搜索) and includes new investors such as Eventide Asset Management (搜索), alongside continued support from existing backers.
The financing follows a landmark clinical milestone: on June 4, 2026, Stanford Medicine delivered the world's first compact upright proton therapy treatment using Leo's Marie® platform, treating a seven-year-old child with a complex brain tumor (搜索).
"This financing lets us accelerate that platform strategy across proton, photon and imaging," said Stephen Towe, CEO and Co-Founder of Leo Cancer Care (搜索). "For decades, the industry has tried to lower the cost of cancer care by making equipment cheaper and stripping out capability. Our treatment approach is the opposite — to reimagine how care is delivered, designed around the patient rather than the machine, so advanced treatment can reach communities that never had access before, without compromising quality."
A Paradigm Shift in Patient Positioning
The company's platform is built on a first-principles concept: because the human body spends most of its life upright, Leo designs imaging and treatment around that natural position. Growing global research indicates this may support more consistent anatomical positioning and organ stability compared with conventional supine, or lying-down, treatments.
At the heart of the platform is an upright imaging system that has received FDA clearance, with planned future applications across radiology in addition to its role in treatment planning and delivery. The same upright architecture is applied across proton therapy, photon therapy, and imaging, creating a unified approach to cancer care spanning diagnosis, planning, and treatment.
The Marie® Platform and the Stanford Milestone
The Marie® platform achieves its compact footprint by fixing the radiation beam and gently rotating the seated patient rather than a multi-tonne gantry. This design enables a proton therapy treatment room approximately five times smaller than a conventional gantry-based system — a comparison based on actual facility drawings — allowing proton therapy to be installed within existing radiotherapy vaults.
Nataliya Kovalchuk, Clinical Professor at Stanford Radiation Oncology, described the achievement as "a remarkable world-first milestone," noting that "upright proton therapy has the potential to make proton treatment more compact, efficient, and cost-effective, helping expand access to advanced cancer care around the world."
The Stanford treatment utilized the Mevion S250-FIT upright proton therapy system in conjunction with the Leo Cancer Care (搜索) upright patient positioner. Kovalchuk acknowledged the multidisciplinary effort behind the achievement, crediting the medical physics team, dosimetry team, radiation oncology team, and radiation therapy technologist team for "countless hours of commissioning, QA, planning, testing, and validation."
Growing Institutional Adoption and Strategic Partnerships
Leading cancer institutions are already embracing the upright approach. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and McLaren Health Care (搜索) are among the organizations integrating the upright platform into their programs — adoption that spans both world-leading academic centers and smaller, regional community-based networks.
Alongside the financing, Leo Cancer Care (搜索) has entered a major strategic partnership with an international healthcare giant, signaling growing industry attention to the upright paradigm. Details of the collaboration will be announced separately in the coming weeks.
PR Yu, founder of Yu Galaxy (搜索) and a long-time investor in the company, emphasized the global implications: "Leo Cancer Care (搜索) is poised to revolutionize cancer treatment in more than ten countries, with many installations the first in their region or country. The upright radiotherapy and radiology technologies Leo has pioneered are lowering the cost and shortening the time of cancer treatment, and providing options that did not exist before for pediatric patients and patients of larger body size."
The new capital will fund manufacturing scale-up, accelerate commercial deployment, and continue clinical and product development across the integrated upright platform, with the goal of bringing advanced cancer care closer to the patients who need it.