"My fondest hope is that maybe depression and other mental health disorders may be diagnosed by underlying cause, rather than categorized dualistically," Edward Bullmore, director of the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, and head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, told his audience at the European Congress of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP). "I think it's much more aligned with the way that the rest of medicine has been working for some time."
A series A fundraising round lifted the mood at Genetikaplus Ltd. (Genetika+), raking in $10 million, a healthy 33% more than the initial target of $7.5 million. Proceeds from the round will go to fund trials of the Jerusalem-based company’s “brain-in-a-dish” technology for evaluating the best antidepressant for each patient. Greybird Ventures led the round, with participation by Meron Capital, Jumpspeed Ventures and Sapir Venture Partners.
Preclinical neuroscience firm Delix Therapeutics Inc., a startup developing non-hallucinogenic analogues of psychedelics, has closed a $70 million series A financing. The new funds will help the Boston-based company advance two lead candidates through phase I trials, DLX-1 and DLX-7, with studies planned for starts in late 2022 or early 2023.
Rune Labs Inc. is on a mission to make the mysteries of the brain easier to read for both clinicians and biopharma companies. Having a fresh $22.8 million in a series A financing on the books will no doubt make the goal easier to reach.
Rune Labs Inc. is on a mission to make the mysteries of the brain easier to read for both clinicians and biopharma companies. Having a fresh $22.8 million in a series A financing on the books will no doubt make the goal easier to reach. The new round pushed total funding for development of the San Francisco-based company’s brain data software platform to $30.1 million.
Shares of Axsome Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:AXSM) hit a 52-week low on Aug. 9, falling 46.5% to close at $24.37, after the FDA said deficiencies in an NDA in major depressive disorder for its drug, AXS-05 (dextromethorphan + bupropion), would "preclude labeling discussions" for now.
Sonde Health struck a deal with Qualcomm Technologies Inc. to embed its vocal health biomarker product, Sonde One, in the Snapdragon 888 and 778G 5G mobile platforms. The deal would make vocal biomarker monitoring native to the devices that use the company’s chips in mobile and IoT devices.
Compass Pathways Ltd. has joined with a U.K. hospital and an academic establishment to research the role of psychedelic medicine in new models of mental health care. The London-based company signed a memorandum of understanding with South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London to launch the project.
KT Corp. took its first step into the digital therapies space by entering into an agreement with Neurosigma Inc. to develop electronic therapies to treat neurological and neuropsychological disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression and epilepsy. KT will support the design and development of Neurosigma’s next-generation versions of external trigeminal nerve stimulation (eTNS) products that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), big data and cloud capabilities.
While there is known to be an association between inflammation and depression, it is not known if there is cause and effect. Now, the power of the UK Biobank has been brought to bear to show that when all genetic, health and environmental factors are accounted for, people with depression have higher levels of inflammation in their bodies than controls.
