NeoMedLight Used EIC Accelerator Money to Treat Cancer Mouth Sores

Radiotherapy and chemotherapy leave many cancer patients with painful mouth ulcers and skin burns, and when NeoMedLight applied for EU money there was "no approved preventive or curative treatment" for them, in the words of its project summary. The one approach it calls validated is photobiomodulation: red light at strictly controlled doses that helps the damaged tissue cope. NeoMedLight, a company in Villeurbanne near Lyon, set out to make that light easy to give. Its device, CareMin650, uses a flexible fabric woven from optical fibres that glows evenly against the skin or inside the mouth.

In the January 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the European Commission selected NeoMedLight as the sole beneficiary of the CareMin650 project, according to the Commission's list of selected companies. The grant agreement, signed on 8 April 2019, paid an EU contribution of €2,393,955.38 towards a total cost of €3,419,936.25 for a project that ran from 1 May 2019 to 30 April 2022, according to CORDIS. The device was CE marked in February 2020. On 1 June 2022, a month after the project ended, the Lyon commercial court opened a safeguard procedure for the company, according to the French official gazette BODACC.

Where NeoMedLight Stands Now

NeoMedLight is a registered company, still trading, with one establishment, listed by the national company directory as an SME with 3 to 5 employees in 2024. It has been working under a court-supervised safeguard plan since 6 December 2022, when the Lyon court adopted a plan lasting eight years and named a commissioner to oversee its execution, according to BODACC. A French safeguard procedure (procédure de sauvegarde) is opened at the request of a company that is in difficulty but can still pay its debts as they fall due; it freezes past debts and lets the company reschedule them under a plan, without a sale or liquidation. If the plan runs its course, it ends in December 2030. The terms of the plan are not public. Because safeguard is a court restructuring procedure, this series classes NeoMedLight as insolvent since June 2022.

The management has changed since. Co-founder Pierre Saint-Girons, chief executive during the EU project, ceased to be managing director in April 2023, and in May 2024 Cédric Brochier handed the presidency to CBH, a holding company, according to two BODACC notices. The national directory names CBH as president. The company's website is online, but its newest news item dates from October 2021.

The device is still in clinical use. In June 2025 the Centre Hospitalier de Valenciennes began a real-life data collection study of CareMin650 for mouth sores and skin damage in cancer treatment, with an estimated enrolment of 33,000 patients and a planned end in October 2034, according to its ClinicalTrials.gov record. NeoMedLight is not the sponsor. The Strasbourg Europe Cancer Institute has registered a randomised pilot study comparing CareMin650 inside the mouth with an external light device, ATP38, in 60 patients; its record shows it as not yet recruiting, with an estimated start in June 2026, and the protocol was published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine in April 2025.

The Technology: Light Woven Into Fabric

Oral mucositis, ulceration of the lining of the mouth, and radiation dermatitis, burns on the irradiated skin, are among the most common side effects of cancer treatment. They make eating painful, can compromise the cancer treatment itself and, in the words of the CORDIS report, "ultimately, they can lead to death". Photobiomodulation has been given with lasers, which need trained staff and careful dosing. The report says few hospitals "have the expertise to handle the technique in a reproductible, effective and safe fashion".

NeoMedLight's answer is Lightex, a fabric in which optical fibres are woven like threads and release light along their length. Placed against the skin or used inside the mouth, it spreads red LED light evenly over the whole surface, and the device controls the dose so the operator does not have to. The fabric came from Brochier Technologies, a Lyon weaving company, which in 2015 transferred its complete business in health products using woven optical fibres to NeoMedLight in exchange for new shares, a contribution valued at €3.85 million net, according to BODACC. The same fabric was used first in BiliCocoon, a wrap that treats jaundice in newborns, which the US Food and Drug Administration cleared in October 2017 under 510(k) K163526. In 2021 the UK distributor Central Medical Supplies supplied 70 BiliCocoon systems to two English neonatal networks for home phototherapy, according to Infant Journal.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project's aim, as written on CORDIS, was to "finalise CareMin650 development and achieve market preparedness". It forecast "€20.8 million cumulative profit, a ROI of 5.08 and from 8 to 20 new job positions by 2025". In October 2019 the company told FashionUnited it planned to sell in Europe from the first quarter of 2020, enter the US market in 2022 and raise €5 million.

The final periodic report, covering May 2021 to April 2022, records real progress on the European side. The CE mark came in February 2020. The 72-patient Safe PBM study in five French radiotherapy centres found no device-related adverse events in 1,312 sessions, and lesions improved or stabilised in 71% of patients treated after sores had appeared, according to its publication in Supportive Care in Cancer; the study had no comparison group, so it could not prove efficacy. By the end of the project, distributors were signed in Germany, the UK, Spain, Estonia, Switzerland, Italy, Australia and the United Arab Emirates. The British one, Oncology Imaging Systems, announced its exclusive UK and Ireland deal in August 2020. Doctors at Paris's Saint-Antoine hospital reported no device-related adverse events in 25 stem cell transplant patients, in a retrospective study published in 2022.

The US route did not get far. The PrOMiSE efficacy study, which CORDIS calls the "FDA efficacy study", was to enrol 100 patients and "was discontinued after 15 patients had been enrolled as the recruitment was far too slow", which the report blames on the COVID-19 pandemic. Its ClinicalTrials.gov record, at the RWTH Aachen university hospital in Germany, lists the study as completed with 15 patients, without results. No US clearance for CareMin650 could be found; NeoMedLight's only entry in the FDA 510(k) database is BiliCocoon. A pelvic and endovaginal applicator was in development; the report says a first series was produced, but no launch has been announced.

1. Industrialise the device and obtain CE markingDeliveredCE mark in February 2020, per CORDIS.
2. Safety data in patientsDeliveredSafe PBM, 72 patients, no device-related adverse events, published 2021.
3. Efficacy study for the US (100 patients)Not achievedStopped at 15 patients; no results posted.
4. European distributionDeliveredDistributors in eight countries by April 2022; still used in French hospital studies in 2025 and 2026.
5. US market entry in 2022Not achievedNo FDA clearance or US launch announced.
6. Pelvic and endovaginal applicatorUnverifiedFirst series produced, per CORDIS; no launch found.
7. 8 to 20 new jobs by 2025Not achieved3 to 5 employees in 2024, per INSEE.

The project ended on time on 30 April 2022, after three reporting periods. The safeguard procedure opened 32 days later.

The Money

NeoMedLight files its accounts with a confidentiality declaration in most years, so its income statement is often not public. The annual accounts collected by INPI and published by the French Ministry of Economy in its financial ratios dataset show revenue in only two years: €536,194 in the year to March 2018 and €1,456,154 in the year to March 2024. How much of the 2024 revenue came from CareMin650 and how much from BiliCocoon is not disclosed.

The net result is published for six years. The company lost €847,070 in 2017/18, made a profit of €611,933 in 2019/20, the first year of the grant, and has lost money in every year shown since: €1,228,709 in 2022/23, the year of the safeguard procedure, then €370,741 and €137,936. The latest figure also appears in the national company directory. Equity covered 43% of the balance sheet in March 2025, down from 78% in March 2021, according to the same dataset. The €5 million round planned in 2019 could not be found, and no other outside funding round has been reported.

Why Europe Should Care

The EU's Europe's Beating Cancer Plan, adopted in February 2021, includes a "Better life for cancer patients" initiative and counts more than 12 million cancer survivors in Europe. Treatment side effects are part of that quality-of-life agenda, and supportive care devices rarely attract the venture money that goes to cancer drugs. NeoMedLight is also a case of a European textile maker finding a medical use for its weaving know-how, with the product developed and certified in Europe.

The obstacle is evidence. The CORDIS report itself says photobiomodulation is "barely used" for these side effects, and the one efficacy study NeoMedLight started was stopped early. The CORDIS report says the company was working with Paris hospitals to gather data for reimbursement in France and had submitted a brief to Health Technology Wales; no reimbursement decision could be found.

The Verdict

NeoMedLight has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, clinical trial registries, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.