Emphysema does its damage quietly. Over years, the air sacs deep in the lung lose their elasticity, air gets trapped, and the lung swells - hyperinflates - until every breath becomes work. More than three million Americans live with the disease. Yet fewer than one in a hundred ever receives an interventional treatment for it. Not because they don't need one, but because the options on the table are either too risky or too narrow.
Apreo Health, a roughly 29-person company headquartered at 4040 Campbell Ave in Menlo Park, California, exists to change that math. Its answer is the BREATHE Airway Scaffold: a self-expanding implant, made of the shape-memory alloy nitinol, that a physician places through a standard bronchoscope. Rather than removing lung tissue or blocking off a lobe, the scaffold tents open a targeted airway so trapped air can escape and the overinflated lung can settle.
The distinction sounds subtle. In practice it is the whole thesis. For decades, the interventional playbook for severe emphysema has meant collapsing hyperinflated regions with one-way valves or removing them surgically. Both work by taking lung out of the equation - and both carry real risk in tissue that is already fragile. Apreo's wager is that you can relieve the pressure while leaving the healthy tissue in place.
The company was incubated at The Foundry, a medtech accelerator with a long track record of device startups, and is led by co-founders Karun D. Naga, an engineer-operator serving as CEO, and Marty Mayse, MD, its chief scientific officer. In 2025 the approach moved from promising to fundable: first-in-human data, a top-journal publication, an FDA breakthrough tag, a $130 million round, and a pivotal trial - all within roughly a year.
