As patients lay on beds with massive machines swirling around them during radiation therapy, one simple obstacle stands in the way of the complex technology delivering optimal cancer treatment: breathing.
Radiation therapy must be carefully targeted to tumors to avoid damage to surrounding healthy tissue, but the motion of breathing can disrupt that precision. Current solutions for respiratory motion management may only work in select scenarios or require patients to remove clothing.
Enter the Eden Prairie-based medtech firm EmpNia and its new device, eMotus. Founder and CEO Manojeet Bhattacharya said the device looks as simple as a piece of tape holding down a strand of hair, and it works with many imaging and treatment systems.
“There’s nothing in the market that is a universal technology,” Bhattacharya said. Other devices managing respiratory motion don’t work across the entire universe of imaging and radiation delivery technologies, he added.
Late last month, eMotus received U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance to help doctors plan and perform radiation treatment, taking into account the tumor motion due to patient breathing. Now, Bhattacharya is lifting his startup out of stealth mode after raising more than $3 million, eyeing a limited release beginning in August.
“We want this device to be the go-to device for every scenario,” Bhattacharya said. He first learned about the effect of breathing in radiation therapy while undergoing postdoctoral training at Indiana University decades ago.

Dr. Stephanie Terezakis, head of the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Department of Radiation Oncology, said radiation oncologists’ goal is to target cancer as precisely as possible with a radiation beam while also minimizing the radiation dose for surrounding healthy tissue and organs.
“When we’re trying to deliver the radiation with that level of accuracy, we need to take into account the fact that the tumor itself is moving,” Terezakis said.