Doctors are being asked to trade scalpels for lightsabers
A biotech firm's cancer treatment uses light, not knives, and a familiar business model.
The story
A biotech firm, Rakuten Medical, is developing a 'lightsaber' cancer treatment using light-based therapy, aiming to enter the U.S. market with a focus on minimizing invasiveness and improving patient quality of life.
Source: fortune.com
Our reading
The CEO of Rakuten Medical is comparing his cancer treatment to a lightsaber, which is not a weapon but a metaphor for a light-based therapy. This is not a joke, but it is a strange way to describe a medical device that uses red light to kill cancer cells. The company’s business model is also oddly familiar: give away the machine for free, charge a fortune for the consumables.
Doctors, it seems, are not as easily convinced as the CEO. They’re used to scalpels, not lightsabers, and they’re not rushing to replace their knives with what is essentially a fancy flashlight. But the company is betting that if they make the platform free, doctors will eventually need to buy the drug, which is where the real money is.
The company’s CEO is also talking about entering markets in Asia, where Japanese regulatory approval is enough to get the treatment sold. It’s a strange way to build a global business, but maybe the lightsaber is just the beginning.
