For a colorectal cancer researcher trying to understand why a tumor resists chemotherapy, the question often comes down to oxidative stress: how many free radicals a single cell is producing, where inside that cell they cluster, and how that signature shifts when a candidate drug is added. Today, that question is hard to answer with precision. QT Sense, a Dutch deeptech company spun out of work in Groningen, is betting that a fluorescent nanodiamond, small enough to sit inside a living cell, can answer it.
The company's product, Quantum Nuova, uses nitrogen-vacancy centers in nanodiamonds as quantum sensors that produce spatially resolved, quantitative maps of radical levels for disease research, drug efficacy profiling, and environmental monitoring [QT Sense Website, 2026]. Early-access systems are already in the hands of research and drug discovery partners, including groups working on colorectal cancer [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026]. The patient population in view is broad, anyone whose disease is shaped by oxidative stress, but the near-term beachhead is preclinical oncology research, where measuring radical activity at single-cell resolution could sharpen which drug candidates move forward and which are dropped.
The standard of care today
Quantum Nuova is a research instrument, not a diagnostic device cleared by the FDA or EMA. No clinical phase has been announced, and the underlying nanodiamond sensing approach has been described in peer-reviewed work, including an in vivo study in C. elegans models published in 2025 [PubMed, 2025], but it has not been validated as a clinical diagnostic in humans. For colorectal cancer specifically, the standard of care today still rests on colonoscopy and tissue biopsy for diagnosis, histopathology and molecular markers (KRAS, BRAF, MSI status) for treatment selection, and surgery combined with regimens such as FOLFOX or FOLFIRI for management. Oxidative stress profiling, where QT Sense plays, sits upstream of all of that, in the laboratories where the next generation of therapies is screened.
The bet
QT Sense is selling a tool, not a therapy. The business model is B2B: ship Quantum Nuova systems to pharma research groups, academic labs, and contract research organizations, and let those customers generate single-cell radical maps that conventional fluorescence assays cannot produce with the same quantitative rigor. The wedge is physics. Nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond are sensitive to magnetic fields at the nanoscale, which lets them report on free radical concentrations from inside a cell rather than averaged across a population of cells. If the readouts hold up across customer hands and across disease models, the company is positioned to become a standard piece of equipment in oxidative stress research, in the way confocal microscopes or flow cytometers are today.
Why it could be big
The market shape favors picks-and-shovels plays in drug discovery. Pharma companies have been steady buyers of new measurement technology when it credibly de-risks a preclinical decision, and oncology accounts for a large share of global R&D spend. QT Sense has now raised across two seed rounds: roughly €6 million ($6.5M) in February 2025 [EU-Startups, Feb 2025] and a further €4 million ($4.3M) in February 2026 [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026]. The company is listed by PitchBook in diagnostic equipment, with verticals in HealthTech, Life Sciences, and Oncology [PitchBook, 2026].
Seed (Feb 2025) | 6.5 | $M
Seed (Feb 2026) | 4.3 | $M
Total disclosed | 10.8 | $M
Founder Romana Schirhagl is listed publicly as the founder of QT Sense [LinkedIn, 2026], and her academic group in Groningen has been a consistent contributor to the nanodiamond sensing literature, including the C. elegans in vivo work cited above [PubMed, 2025]. That research lineage matters for a company whose product depends on customers trusting both the physics and the biology. Tech press coverage in early 2025 framed the nanodiamond approach as a notable European bet on quantum sensing in medicine [Tech Funding News, Feb 2025] [Silicon Canals, Feb 2025] [Tech.eu, Feb 2025].
The honest counterfactual
What bears say: research instruments are a slow business. Selling capital equipment into academic and pharma labs typically means long sales cycles, demanding service expectations, and a customer base that scrutinizes every benchmark. Established life-science tools companies have deep distribution and bundled service contracts that a seed-stage startup cannot match. The 2026 follow-on at $4.3M is smaller than the 2025 round [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026], which suggests the company is funding incrementally against milestones rather than scaling commercial operations aggressively. What bulls answer: the early-access deployments into colorectal cancer research groups [The Quantum Insider, Feb 2026] are the right proof points to pursue first. If those partners publish results that other labs want to replicate, demand for Quantum Nuova systems can compound through the literature itself, which is how many durable life-science tools franchises were built. The peer-reviewed foundation under the sensing technique [PubMed, 2025] is the kind of evidence base that makes pharma buyers willing to take a meeting.
What to watch
The next twelve months are about converting early-access placements into named, citable customer results. Watch for peer-reviewed papers from QT Sense's research partners that use Quantum Nuova readouts to make a specific claim about a drug candidate or a disease mechanism, particularly in colorectal cancer. Watch for the company to disclose its first pharma partnership by name, which would mark a shift from academic credibility to commercial validation. And watch the cadence of fundraising: another round in late 2026 or 2027, likely a Series A, would signal that the instrument has found a repeatable buyer.
For now, the disease state to keep in mind is colorectal cancer, and the patients who ultimately benefit are the ones whose future treatment regimens are selected with a sharper read on how their cells handle oxidative stress. That is a long road from a nanodiamond glowing inside a cell in a Groningen lab. It is a road with a defensible scientific premise and a credible team walking it.
Pulse Raman covers biotech, digital health, and clinical AI for Startuply.