Cambridge, Massachusetts · Immuno-Oncology
Michael Goldberg
He looked at the empty cavity left after a tumor is cut out and asked the question nobody had: why not fill it with medicine?
FOUNDER & CEO // SURGE THERAPEUTICS
He looked at the empty cavity left after a tumor is cut out and asked the question nobody had: why not fill it with medicine?
Most cancer immunotherapy is a drip and a wait. It floods the whole body, hoping a fraction of the dose reaches the tumor. Michael Goldberg runs SURGE Therapeutics on the opposite instinct: deliver the entire effective dose to one spot, at one moment, the place and time cancer is most likely to come roaring back - the open surgical cavity, while the patient is still on the table.
SURGE's platform is an injectable, biodegradable hydrogel. A surgeon cuts out a solid tumor, then packs the void with the drug-loaded gel before suturing the patient closed. The gel sits where the tumor used to be and steadily releases immune-triggering molecules for weeks, turning a wound into a slow-burn drug depot aimed straight at any cells the scalpel missed.
The category has a name now - intraoperative immunotherapy - largely because Goldberg insisted on building it. The arithmetic he repeats is blunt: roughly 9 million people undergo surgical tumor removal each year, about 40% recur within five years, and recurrence or metastasis drives some 90% of all cancer deaths. The operation cures, and then it doesn't. SURGE is built around the gap in between.
As of early 2026, the company has completed Phase 1 dosing of its lead program and is preparing a registrational trial in triple-negative breast cancer, with bladder and prostate programs lined up behind it. Goldberg has raised roughly $58 million, cleared an FDA IND, and assembled a scientific board that reads like a who's-who of the field - including the MIT professor who once supervised his PhD.
"That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, to leave that space empty when we could be filling it with medicine."
▶ Watch Goldberg on the latest milestone (NYSE TV)The mission is to create a world where nobody grieves the loss of a loved one to preventable post-surgical cancer recurrence.// Michael Goldberg, Founder & CEO
The surgeon removes the solid tumor, leaving a cavity that, in standard practice, gets sutured shut and left empty.
Instead of empty space, the cavity gets a drug-loaded, biodegradable hydrogel - the full effective dose, placed exactly where recurrence starts.
Over the following weeks the gel releases immune-triggering molecules locally, waking the immune system against any residual disease, then dissolves.
Goldberg was a tenure-track professor - Cancer Immunology & Virology at Dana-Farber, Microbiology & Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School - when his own lab developed the injectable hydrogel that became SURGE. He could have published, patented, and kept the title.
He didn't. Having lost several friends to cancer that returned after surgery, he has said he felt a moral obligation to work on the problem full-time, and founded SURGE in 2020 to carry the idea to patients rather than to journals.
"If you have great ideas, if you have outstanding data, there will be a path to success."
Intraoperative immunotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer, delivering a locally concentrated dose at the surgical site. Phase 1 dosing complete; registrational trial in preparation.
An intraoperative program in bladder cancer, the indication behind SURGE's first FDA IND clearance, advancing toward Phase 2.
A companion program extending the platform to prostate cancer, also moving toward Phase 2 development.
"With SRG-514, we are targeting the primary drivers of cancer mortality - by improving how, when, and where immunotherapy is delivered."// Michael Goldberg