Acurion is building AI that turns the pathology slides already produced in routine clinical care into a rich source of biomarker information, making precision oncology faster, cheaper, and more accessible. Based in San Diego and developed out of research at the University of California, San Diego, the company's OncoGaze platform analyzes standard hematoxylin-and-eosin pathology images to extract biomarker insights that traditionally require expensive, time-consuming molecular assays. By reading the slides that are already prepared during standard workups, Acurion enables an instantaneous, scalable, and broadly accessible approach to identifying which patients are likely to respond to specific therapies.
The scientific foundation behind Acurion is substantial. The platform can be trained to detect biomarkers across different solid tumors, and the company has demonstrated real clinical relevance through research collaborations. Working with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, Acurion has applied its technology to better subtype pancreatic cancer and inform treatment selection, and it has developed a homologous recombination deficiency test designed to identify patients most likely to respond to PARP inhibitors, with supporting work published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Acurion's image-based strategy addresses a central bottleneck in precision medicine: molecular testing is powerful but slow, costly, and unevenly available, leaving many patients without timely biomarker information. By inferring biomarker status directly from routine pathology images, Acurion aims to democratize access to insights that today are concentrated in well-resourced academic centers, while also enabling research at scale across large slide archives.
In 2025 Acurion closed an oversubscribed $4.3 million seed round, exceeding its $4 million target, led by TK and Partners with participation from Mesa Verde Venture Partners, the National Foundation for Cancer Research and the Asian Fund for Cancer Research, Bootstrap Ventures, and additional institutional and impact investors. Formerly known as Io9 before rebranding, Acurion will use the funding to advance clinical validation, platform development, regulatory preparation, and commercialization of OncoGaze.