NeuraLight Secures $25 Million Series A to Develop Precision Medicine for Neurological Diseases using Computer Vision and Smartphones

May 25, 2022 | Business

The company leverages oculometric data to measure the progression of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, MS, and ALS, validating that the ‘eye is the window to the mind’

Austin, Texas and Tel Aviv, ISRAEL – WEBWIRE –



NeuraLight, the company developing objective and sensitive biomarkers for neurological disorders, today announced $25 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), with participation from Breyer Capital, Samsung Next, VSC Ventures, Viz.ai co-founders Chris Mansi and David Golan, and TheKey co-founder and Executive Chair Lily Sarafan, among others, and will support the company as it seeks to improve the design of neurological clinical trials, increase the probability of success for novel neurological therapeutics, and usher in a new era of precision medicine for neurology.


Presently, neurological evaluation is highly subjective, as evidenced by a 25%-30% inter-rater variability, and up to a 30% chance of misdiagnosis for diseases such as Parkinson’s. Lacking objective and sensitive endpoints also results in a dismal 6% of approval rate for neurological therapeutics, less than 50% the approval rate for non-neurological drugs. 


“The unmet need in neurology of establishing objective and sensitive biomarkers is immense. NeuraLight’s approach holds real promise to address this need,” said Thomas Südhof, MD, Nobel laureate, and professor of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and serves on NeuraLight’s Scientific Advisory Board.


NeuraLight leverages proprietary Computer Vision and Deep Learning algorithms to simultaneously extract all relevant oculometric markers from facial videos captured with a standard webcam or smartphone. These digital markers can serve as a reliable proxy for currently used clinical endpoints, and will provide an accurate snapshot of a person’s neurological status, enabling pharmaceutical companies to introduce smart phenotyping, reduce misdiagnosis, and accurately and sensitively measure disease progression. This, in turn, will help pharma companies increase the probability of success, and develop precision care for neurology. The company’s technology is applicable to a wide range of neurological disorders, initially focused on Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and ALS. 


Since launching in late 2021, NeuraLight quickly attracted a deeply seasoned executive and clinical team to round out its Scientific Advisory Board, which includes two Nobel Laureates — Professor Thomas Südhof, a world-renowned neuroscientist who won a Nobel Prize for his work on synaptic transmission, and Stanford Professor Alvin Roth who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for his work on the kidney exchange program, as well as Prof. Fred Lublin, Director of the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis at Mount Sinai Center. Additionally, Gil Shklarski, Ph.D., who previously served as the Chief Technology Officer of Flatiron Health, joined the company as Scientific Co-founder and Board Observer to work alongside NeuraLight’s Chief Innovation Officer, Dr. Rivka Kretiman, who previously was Global Head of Innovative Research and Development of Teva Pharmaceuticals. Today, NeuraLight also announces the addition of neuropharmacologist Olivier Rascol, MD, PhD, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at Toulouse University Hospital, who brings extensive research experience in Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders. 


“After watching my grandfather’s battle with Alzheimer’s, I began studying these diseases in depth, and it soon became clear to me that not only are neurological diseases very hard to understand but that cures for these diseases are extremely hard to discover because these diseases lack robust objective and sensitive measures. That’s why we founded NeuraLight, to measure neurological disorders accurately and objectively, and bring precision medicine to neurology,“ said Dr. Micha Breakstone, co-founder and CEO of NeuraLight. Breakstone is a serial entrepreneur who exited with his previous company Chorus.ai for $575m, and partnered with award-winning mathematician and repeat entrepreneur Edmund Ben-Ami who serves as CTO, to found NeuraLight in 2021. “Today, we are honored that so many notable investors and experts in neurology see the value in our technology, and we’re excited to start implementing this technology in clinical trials.” 


“NeuraLight’s precise friction-reducing breakthrough to create digital biomarkers can transform the field of neurology – from early detection to drug discovery,” said Eli Groner, Managing Director at Koch Disruptive Technologies. “We are very excited about the implications for humanity”


If you’re interested in joining NeuraLight’s mission to transform the lives of billions of people impacted by neurological disorders, like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Multiple Sclerosis, please visit: https://neuralight.ai/


About NeuraLight 

NeuraLight is on a mission to transform the lives of billions of people impacted by neurological disorders by digitizing neurological evaluation and care. Our AI-driven platform integrates multiple digital markers to accelerate and improve drug development, monitoring, and precision care for patients with neurological disorders. The technology driving the platform includes proprietary Deep Learning algorithms which automatically extract a host of digital oculometric markers from facial videos captured with a standard smartphone or webcam. Our founders are repeat entrepreneurs and industry veterans (including both the co-founder of Chorus.ai and the founding CTO of Flatiron health) leading a 25-strong team, supported by renowned neurologists and 2 Nobel laureates as well as a stellar Scientific Advisory Board, and have raised $30.5M to date.

WebWireID289461

Contact Information
Kelly McKeon
PR
VSC on behalf of NeuraLight
neuralight@vsc.co

This news content may be integrated into any legitimate news gathering and publishing effort. Linking is permitted.

News Release Distribution and Press Release Distribution Services Provided by WebWire.

NeuraLight Launches from Stealth to Digitize Neurology

Nov 6, 2021 | Business

NeuraLight today launched out of stealth with a mission to transform the lives of billions of people suffering from neurological disorders by digitizing neurological evaluation and care. Using video generated by a standard smartphone or web camera, NeuraLight applies proprietary Computer Vision and Deep Learning algorithms to capture objective and sensitive digital markers to help accelerate drug development and increase the success rates of new drugs. These digital endpoints can be used during all phases of the clinical trial for a wide host of neurological disorders – ultimately helping accelerate clinical trials and increase the probability of success of future therapies for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, and other neurodegenerative diseases. 

After founding Chorus.ai, which sold to ZoomInfo for $575M, CEO and co-founder Micha Breakstone is applying AI to modernize the industry’s ability to advance neurological care and, together with co-Founder and repeat entrepreneur Edmund Ben-Ami, has recruited top talent to drive the company’s mission forward. The team includes Chief Innovation Officer Dr. Rivka Kretiman, previously Head of Global Innovative Research and Development of Teva Pharmaceuticals, who has 26+ years in the pharmaceutical industry, and Professor Ruth Djaldetti, Head of The Movement Disorder Center at the Rabin Medical Center, who will lead the Scientific Advisory Board as well as multiple alumni from Google, Chorus.ai, and Viz.ai. 

Over one billion people worldwide suffer from neurological disorders, most of which have no cure. Currently, neurological evaluation is highly subjective, non-sensitive, and depends on a manual examination of symptoms. As such, pharmaceutical companies haven’t had effective tools to develop precise and effective therapies. 

“Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry for the last two decades, I can confidently say that digital endpoints are the future of neurology,” remarked Rivka Kretiman, Ph.D., Chief Innovation Officer at NeuraLight. “This technology has been the missing piece pharma has needed to make drug development for neurological diseases effective and ultimately more successful, and will create a new standard of measurement for these companies’ drug development pipelines.”

Using a Smartphone to Unlock New Therapies

The team has built a platform that automatically extracts micro-oculometrics, or microscopic eye movement measurements, that serve as objective, sensitive, and reliable digital endpoints for neurological disorders. NeuraLight’s advanced signal processing algorithms achieve sub-pixel resolution and remove both light and movement “noise” from the video frames, which are captured using a standard smartphone or webcam. Since the platform is device-agnostic, pharmaceutical companies can easily integrate and scale NeuraLight into clinical trials and in remote settings while also improving the patient experience. In gathering de-identified data from hundreds of thousands of patients, NeuraLight is building the largest, proprietary, de-identified oculometric database and applying AI to surface insights from the data.

“Neurological diseases are slow killers and are notoriously difficult to measure and treat, so often patients and their loved ones are at the mercy of the disease, and it’s painful to watch,” remarks NeuraLight’s CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Micha Breakstone. “We are on a mission to help improve the quality of life for patients suffering from neurological disorders, and we’re doing that by giving pharmaceutical companies tools to find neurological patterns in patients during clinical trials and build more targeted and effective therapies.”

In addition to Kretiman’s and Djaldetti’s leadership, Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth; ex-Flatiron Health’s CTO Gil Shklarski, Ph.D.; and Founder & CEO of Pomelo Care, Marta Bralic Kerns, will advise the company’s scientific vision as members of NeuraLight’s Scientific Advisory Board. Investors including MSAD, Kli, Tuesday, Operator Partners, and VSC Ventures, the communications consulting agency which specializes in early-stage biotech companies, have fueled $5.5M in funding into NeuraLight’s seed round. Angel investors including Trax Retail’s founding  CEO Tamara Minick-Scokalo; Instacart CEO Fidji Simo, who recently launched Health Research Institute Metrodora; Clover Health CEO Vivek Garipalli; and Noam Soloman, CEO of Immunai – which Micha invested in during the company’s seed-stage three years ago – also join the round with confidence that NeuraLight’s team and technology will pave the path for precision medicine in neurology. 

With this seed funding, the company is looking to partner with pharma companies to help them increase the success rate in developing new drugs, reduce billions of dollars in development costs, and significantly shorten time to market. By implementing NeuraLight, pharma companies can optimize patient selection, reduce the size of the trial, shorten the length of the clinical trial, and increase its probability of success. 

To learn more about NeuraLight and how to partner with the company for clinical trials, visit: https://neuralight.ai/

About NeuraLight 

NeuraLight is a VC-backed venture on a mission to transform the lives of billions of people impacted by neurological disorders by digitizing neurology. Our AI-driven platform integrates multiple objective and standardized digital markers to accelerate and improve drug development, monitoring, and care for patients with neurological disorders. The technology driving the platform includes proprietary Computer Vision & Deep Learning algorithms which automatically extract a host of digital oculometric markers from facial videos captured with a standard smartphone or webcam. These markers serve as an accurate and reliable proxy for currently used endpoints, and taken together form an accurate snapshot of the neurological status. Founded by two repeat entrepreneurs (including co-founder of Chorus.ai), and supported by renowned neurologists and a Nobel Laureate, as well as a stellar Scientific Advisory Board, NeuraLight has raised a seed of $5.5M from world-class investors.