Full-body VC

Robert Nelsen is one of the most successful biotech VCs ever, having backed over three dozen companies that reached billion-dollar valuations.

• He’s also a thyroid cancer survivor who credits early detection to a company in which his firm, Arch Venture Partners, never invested, Axios’ Dan Primack writes.

Why it matters: There’s a simmering medical debate over the value of full-body scans, like the one Nelsen received — and the growing cohort of venture-backed startups that provide them.

• Advocates argue that such scans can find abnormalities that would typically be missed by a standard physical exam.
• Opponents argue that such pricey scans have not been shown to be cost-effective, particularly because they can result in false positives.

Nelsen began getting annual scans around 10 years ago, due to a family history of cancer.

• The early scans showed a nodule on his thyroid, but doctors didn’t believe it was problematic. Then a scan in 2018 showed that the nodule had changed, which isn’t supposed to happen in healthy people.
• “When I went intoStanford for surgery, I asked how many patients they’d had with five years of longitudinal data on their thyroid, and they said I was the first,” Nelsen tells Axios. “The medical profession is trained to be reactive, not proactive.”

The bottom line: One knock on full-body scans is that it’s mostly a concierge service being utilized by the uber-wealthy. And that’s fair.

• But if venture capitalists maintain their interest, then costs might get subsidized to the point where there are enough scans done to determine whether or not it’s a useful technology for the broader population.

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Plus

Kim Kardashian Endorses Full-Body Diagnostic Scans. But Are They Worth It?

According to the hashtag—#notanad—Kim Kardashian was not paid to endorse Prenuvo, a new full-body scan company, which she said “has the ability to detect cancer and diseases such as aneurysms in its earliest stages, before symptoms arise” in an Instagram post. “It was like getting a MRI for an hour with no radiation,” she wrote. “It has really saved some of my friends lives and I just wanted to share.”

Kardashian’s post revealed an ongoing debate on full-body scans to the broader population. You might wonder—if you can afford a peek under the hood, why not? The cost, for starters: A whole body scan, according to Prenuvo’s site, costs $2,499.

But Kardashian isn’t the only one excited about the technology. On July 3, CNET called full-body scans the potential future of preventative medicine. Such companies included include Prenuvo, which raised $70 million in its Series A round last year, and Ezra, which aims to eventually have a 15-minute full-body scan available for $500. (It’s currently $1,350 for a 30-minute scan.)

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