BOSTON, April 21, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Tal Medical,
a clinical-stage medical device company developing a new treatment
for depression and other psychiatric disorders, today announced a
$14 million funding round from
existing investor PureTech, a new institutional investor, and
several prominent individual investors. Tal Medical will use the
new funding to drive the company's clinical research programs in
major depressive and bipolar disorders, advance product development
and scale up the organization.
"Our new and existing investors understand the game-changing
potential for Tal Medical to help people living with depression,
bipolar disorder and other psychiatric disorders," said
Jan Skvarka, the company's President
and CEO. "Their support is critical to advancing our efforts
towards addressing a major unmet need in psychiatry by developing a
safe, rapid-acting treatment for patients."
Major depressive disorder (also called unipolar depression) and
bipolar disorder (also called manic depression) are emotionally
crippling diseases, affecting between 9% and 10% of the US adult
population. Worldwide, they are the number one cause of disability
and suicide. Current antidepressant medications can take 4 to 10
weeks to work, leaving many patients at a risk for suicide or
functional impairment. Due to these limitations in current
treatment options, Tal Medical hopes to provide a rapid-acting
treatment for people with depression. The company is developing a
neurostimulation-based treatment, called Low Field Magnetic
Stimulation (LFMS), derived from echo-planar magnetic resonance
spectroscopic imaging technology. In human clinical trials at
McLean Hospital/Harvard University and
the National Institutes of Health, LFMS has demonstrated a rapid
onset of action without any major side effects in unipolar and
bipolar depression patients. A multi-site study funded by the
National Institute of Mental Health and led by Massachusetts
General Hospital is currently testing the treatment durability.
More studies are needed to confirm the early findings and establish
optimal LFMS treatment regimen.
Tal Medical also announced the addition of two new team members,
Mike Madden and Raju Kucherlapati, PhD. Mr. Madden was hired as
the company's EVP of Product Development. A medical device industry
veteran, Mr. Madden brings 25 years of experience across multiple
clinical areas. Prior to Tal Medical, he was the EVP of Engineering
at NinePoint Medical, a venture-backed imaging company, and has
held several senior R&D roles at Boston Scientific, Medtronic
and Bard. Dr. Kucherlapati joined Tal Medical's Board of Directors.
He is currently the Paul C. Cabot Professor of Genetics and a
Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical
School. Dr. Kucherlapati was the first Scientific Director
of the Harvard-Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics, and a
co-founder and a Board member of Abgenix (acquired by Amgen), and
Millennium Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Takeda).
About Tal Medical, Inc.
Tal Medical, Inc. is a
clinical-stage medical device company developing Low Field Magnetic
Stimulation of the brain for the treatment of psychiatric
disorders. LFMS is a first-in-class, non-invasive neuromodulation
technology that has demonstrated a unique, rapid-acting effect in
major depressive disorder and bipolar depression. Tal was founded
by PureTech, in conjunction with leading scientists in the fields
of depression and neuromodulation.
About PureTech
PureTech is a scientifically driven
research and development company that conceptualizes, sources, and
validates unexpected and potentially disruptive approaches to
advance the needs of human health. Based in Boston, PureTech has an outstanding team of
scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, with connections to top
tier academic institutions. PureTech has a thematic, problem-driven
approach to developing its innovations, proposing non-obvious
solutions rooted in academic research and developing them together
with a creative group of cross-disciplinary experts. PureTech
concentrates on a handful of major initiative areas at a time,
generates and proactively identifies and reviews more than 650
technologies per year, and seeks to select only the most
technologically and commercially promising concepts to advance.
PureTech has active strategic partnerships with forward thinking
health and technology companies.
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SOURCE Tal Medical, Inc.