A biotech firm launched by the self-proclaimed inventor of the Star Trek Holodeck raised $16 million last week to build holographic medical devices to detect and treat cancer.
Holobeam Technologies, a startup based in Nassau County, was founded in 2018 to build medical devices that it says can teletransport energy to tumors and kill cancer. Founder Gene Dolgoff launched the company with a mission to “eradicate cancer deaths,” and has spent the last six years developing medical devices.
The recent funding was led by a single, undisclosed investor. Prior to its $16 million-fundraise, Holobeam raised $100,000 in 2018 from a group of investors including Dr. Kenneth Hall, a surgeon who sits on its board, and Jeff Studley, the founder of CPR MultiMedia Solutions, a Gaithersburg, Maryland-based event management company, according to data from PitchBook. The company was valued at $5.1 million at its launch.
The funds will enable the firm to continue building three different types of medical devices – one that aims to create 3D medical images, and two to provide imaging and cancer treatment, Dolgoff told Crain’s.
He also intends to use $1.5 million of those funds to pay himself, according to federal documents. When asked by Crain’s about the compensation, Dolgoff said the money would be used to pay the salaries of Holobeam’s five full-time employees.
Dolgoff, a physicist who has studied holograms since 1964, said that he’s aiming to kill cancer cells with holographic technology without harming healthy tissue along the way – and is borrowing from the sci-fi concept of teleportation to do it.
It wouldn’t be the first time Dolgoff has tried to merge his scientific and fictional work, he says. The physicist says he gave Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry the idea for the Holodeck, the fictional concept that allowed characters to travel between realms.
Now, Dolgoff has patented the concept of holographic energy teleportation, which he says can kill cancer cells without damaging healthy ones. Current cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation blast toxic radiation to the site of a tumor to kill cancer, but damage healthy skin, muscle tissue and nerves too, Dolgoff said.
That technology was successful in killing off cancer cells for good in mice and dogs, he said. The company hasn’t yet proved that it will work in humans.
Amanda D'Ambrosio , 2024-05-13 11:33:06
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