Belfast start-up Cumulus Neuroscience, formerly known as BrainWaveBank, has raised £6 million to develop a platform it dubs “Fitbit for the brain.”

The funding round was led by the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF), a £250m specialist venture capital fund, medical research charity LifeArc, and the UK Future Fund.

The company produces an integrated physiological and digital biomarker platform designed to provide the clinical trial data and insights needed to improve central nervous system (CNS) therapies to patients.

The platform works via a home usable EEG headset that can monitor neuronal integrity, network connectivity, and the strategies the brain uses to compensate for neuronal damage.
EEG is a monitoring method that records electrical activity on the scalp, which has been shown to represent the activity of the surface layer of the brain underneath.

These EEG signals are synchronised with a mobile device based functional assessments of 4 neurofunctional domains: cognition, mood, language, and sleep.

The company said the platform also provides cloud-based data storage and a machine learning architecture to analyse composite behavioural, physiological, and functional data.

The platform also provides AI-based data analysis allowing it to detect subtle but therapeutically relevant changes in patients according to Cumulous, which allow it to provide an assessment of CNS treatment outcomes.

The company was founded in January 2015 by Ronan Cunningham, Brian Murphy, Siggi Saevarsson, and Urs Streidl.

The latest round takes their total funding to date to £9.7 million.

"We are delighted that DDF and LifeArc share our mission, addressing the clear need for more effective tools to provide the critical clinical trial data and analysis needed to improve the successful delivery of new CNS therapies to patients,” said chief executive at Cumulus Neuroscience Ronan Cunningham. “This funding will allow us to build on the ground-breaking advances we have made in remote, frequent monitoring of brain activity and cognitive function in the home, in partnership with leading developers of digital biomarkers.”

He added: “We believe our integrated next generation platform can improve the execution of clinical trials by yielding significant time and cost savings, adding meaningful value to the next generation of CNS therapies."

Share Story: