NeuraLight, the health-tech startup based in Israel, recently completed its Series A funding round in which it managed to raise an impressive $25 million. The purpose of raising the funds is to improve the neurological evaluation’s accuracy which can be done with upgraded therapeutics and clinical trials. This can be accomplished via the use of its eye-tracking platform that uses artificial intelligence. Kock Disruptive Technologies, an investment firm, headed the funding round and the other participants included names like VSC Ventures, Samsung, Breyer Capital, and NEXT. David Golan and Chris Mansi, the co-founders of Viz.ai were also part of the funding round, as were many others.
The total funding of NeuraLight has now increased to $30.5 million after this funding round. The neurological evaluation that is conducted nowadays tends to be very subjective and there is a 30% possibility of misdiagnosing diseases, such as Parkinson’s. Since there is no objective data, there is only a 6% approval rate granted to neurological therapeutics, while non-neurological drugs have an approval rate of 50%. A member of the Scientific Advisory Board of NeuraLight, Thomas Sudhof said that there is a great need to establish sensitive and objective biomarkers where neurology is concerned. He added that this need could be addressed by NeuraLight.
Sudhof is a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine and teaches cellular and molecular physiology and a Nobel Laureate. NeuraLightwas launched in 2021 and it obtains oculometric markers (eye movements and conditions) from facial videos that are made with a smartphone or webcam through the use of deep learning algorithms and computer vision. It is possible to gauge the neurological status of a person accurately with the help of these digital markets. Pharmaceutical companies can use this data for measuring the progression of the disease sensitively and accurately. Plus, they can also reduce the possibility of misdiagnosis and make adjustments to neurological precision care.
The technology provided by NeuraLight can be used for monitoring patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease, ALS, Alzheimer’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis and a number of other neurological disorders. The chief executive and co-founder of NeuraLight, Dr. Micha Breakstone said that his grandfather was a patient of Alzheimer’s and he had begun studying these diseases after watching him deal with the disease. He said that it had become apparent that understanding these neurological diseases is tough and finding a cure is also a problem because of the absence of strong objectives and measures.
He stated that this had prompted him to launch NeuraLight, as it could help in measuring neurological disorders objectively and accurately. Breakstone was previously working at Chorus.ai and the serial entrepreneur quit the company with $575 million. He launched NeuraLightwith Edmund Ben-Ami, a repeat entrepreneur and a mathematician, who is currently serving as the CTO. The CEO said that he felt honored to see how their technology was being valued by prominent experts and investors in the field of neurology and they were ready to implement it in clinical trials. The investors are also looking forward to it.