An Implant That Tracks And Treats Cancer Tumors - EP 82 Ben Woodington

An Implant That Tracks And Treats Cancer Tumors - EP 82 Ben Woodington

From Core Memory by Ashlee Vance

July 15, 2026 · 1h 22m · Episode 82

About this episode

Ben Woodington discusses a new implant technology for monitoring and treating cancer tumors.

Treating cancer remains a crude practice. We cut, burn and poison tumors, and we do all this with relatively little precision around both the initial treatment and our ongoing monitoring of how effective the treatment is. You show up for scans now and again and hope that whatever you’ve been doing has been working. Ben Woodington - who is an absolute unit - and the team at Coherence have come up with a new way to monitor and treat tumors. They’ve built an implant that, as the name suggests, gets placed inside the body to keep a constant watch on a tumor’s behavior. The chip also brings with it the ability to deliver electrical signals that may blunt a tumor’s growth. We’re talking constant monitoring of a tumor to see if treatments are working and the ability to read and write electrical signals as part of a totally novel bio-tech device. In this episode, Ben explains how this technology works and, more broadly, he walks us through the emerging field of neuro-oncology or cancer neuroscience. We have a look at Coherence’s device, which is reminiscent of Neuralink’s implant, and rival technology. Since we recorded this episode, Coherence has begun a study in Australia where its…

People in this episode

Host: Ashlee Vance

Guest: Ben Woodington

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Coherence, Neuralink

Places: Australia

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