Tumor-Freezing Tech Raises $14.5M From Public Shares

An Israeli developer of technology that freezes tumors has raised $14.5 million in shares sold to the public. 

IceCure has created a system that uses extremely cold liquid nitrogen to freeze and destroy benign and cancerous tumors. It primarily focuses on breast, kidney, bone, and lung cancer.

Its technology – the ProSense – is minimally invasive, and is a safe, quick, and effective alternative to hospital surgical removal.

The procedure is done under ultrasound to guide a thin, hollow needle into the tumor, and the process itself can be performed quickly in a doctor’s office. 

The company is no longer selling its shares to the public, and will use the funds it has raised to develop the next generation of its technology, as well as collect clinical data to be approved in new territories. 

It is also currently conducting a clinical trial at the Bnai-Zion Medical Center in Haifa, northern Israel, and in the Shamir Medical Center, in Zerifin, central Israel. The trial is being conducted on 115 patients with small kidney tumors who cannot be offered kidney-preserving surgery.

The results from the ongoing trial show that 85.1 percent of the patients did not see a recurrence of the tumor. Treatment time and hospitalization time were relatively short, up to approximately 25 minutes and two days, respectively.

“These impressive interim results demonstrate the value of ProSense for urologists and interventional radiologists as a therapeutic alternative when patients are not eligible for surgery,” said Eyal Shamir, CEO of IceCure.

“We believe the findings will support further use of ProSense in the jurisdictions in which our cryoablation system is approved for use with benign and malignant tissues of the kidney. The growing body of data on ProSense’s efficacy and safety across a broad range of indications supports commercialization momentum, particularly in facilities that benefit from one device that can be used across multiple specialties.”

Kidney tumors have been rising in incidence over the past two decades. According to the American Cancer Society, in 2022, an estimated 79,000 new cases of kidney cancer will be diagnosed, with about 14,000 dying from the disease in the US alone.

IceCure was founded in 2006, and is based in Caesarea, north-central Israel.