Leo Cancer Care raises £48.6m led by Yu Galaxy with Eventide Asset Management
This article covers Leo Cancer Care, a healthtech startup, which has raised £48.6m in a growth funding round to scale an upright imaging and radiotherapy platform. The funds will scale manufacturing, accelerate commercial deployment and progress clinical and product development of a compact proton and photon system designed to reduce treatment-room size and broaden access to advanced cancer care.
Leo Cancer Care, a healthtech startup, has raised £48.6m in a growth funding round to scale an “upright” imaging and radiotherapy platform that aims to reduce the size and cost of proton and photon treatment rooms and broaden access to advanced cancer care. The oversubscribed round was led by Yu Galaxy, with new investor Eventide Asset Management and continued backing from existing shareholders.
Why it matters
Leo’s approach rethinks radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging by designing systems for patients in a seated, upright position rather than lying down. Proponents argue this can deliver more consistent anatomical positioning and organ stability for some patients, and the company says the architecture can shrink a proton therapy treatment room by around five times compared with conventional gantry-based systems. That footprint reduction could make advanced modalities such as proton therapy feasible in more hospitals and regional centres, shifting deployment from large, bespoke facilities toward existing radiotherapy vaults.
Clinical adoption is already underway: Stanford Medicine delivered what Leo describes as the world’s first compact upright proton therapy treatment in June 2026, and institutions including Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and McLaren Health Care are trialling or installing the platform. The momentum gives a practical test of whether upright workflows can deliver equivalent outcomes while easing access and cost barriers.
Inside the product
At the centre of Leo’s stack is Marie, an integrated platform that combines an upright, FDA-cleared imaging system with treatment capabilities across proton and photon modalities. Rather than rotating a multi-tonne gantry around a patient, the system fixes the radiation beam and gently rotates a seated patient, which is how the company achieves its smaller room footprint.
The upright imaging system is used for diagnosis, treatment planning and delivery, and the company says the same architecture applies across imaging and both treatment types to create a unified clinical workflow. For paediatric patients, Leo offers StatueQuest, a gamified educational tool intended to reduce or eliminate the need for daily sedation during treatment and to make sessions less traumatic.
The company also notes a pending strategic partnership with a major international healthcare group, with details expected in the coming weeks.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Silicon Valley investor Yu Galaxy and brought in Eventide Asset Management as a new backer, alongside continued participation from existing investors. Leo describes the financing as oversubscribed and says the proceeds will be used to scale manufacturing, accelerate commercial deployment and continue clinical and product development across its integrated upright platform.
In the announcement, Stephen Towe, CEO and Co-Founder of Leo Cancer Care, said:
What began as a vision to improve radiation therapy has evolved into something much broader. 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. This financing lets us accelerate that platform strategy across proton, photon and imaging.
In the announcement, PR Yu, founder of Yu Galaxy, said:
Leo Cancer Care 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 result is a dramatic expansion of access to both radiotherapy and diagnostic radiology for a far larger population.
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Founder perspective
Towe, who co-founded the company and serves as CEO, frames Leo’s mission as a system-level redesign of radiotherapy. His comments stress reaching communities that previously lacked access to advanced treatment by exporting capability into smaller facilities rather than stripping out functionality. That framing helps explain why both clinical centres and strategic investors are showing interest: the business case rests on delivering comparable clinical performance while lowering capital and site-preparation barriers.
The bigger picture
The financing arrives amid wider efforts to make high-cost oncology technologies more deployable. Proton therapy has long been constrained by capital intensity and facility footprint; if upright, compact systems can validate equivalent clinical performance, they could accelerate diffusion into regional hospitals across the UK and Europe. Leo has previously pursued European regulatory clearance and publicised a CE mark for Marie, positioning it to pursue rollout beyond the US.
For healthtech investors, the deal reflects continued appetite for hardware-enabled clinical innovation that promises to reduce cost and increase access. For the NHS and European providers, smaller proton and photon installations could offer a pathway to expand advanced radiotherapy without the multi-year, multi-hundred-million-pound projects typical of gantry-based centres.
If upright systems deliver on clinical and operational claims, the result could be a meaningful shift in where and how advanced radiotherapy is provided across UK and European health systems, with implications for hospital planning, capital investment and patient pathways.
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