Tal Medical Attracts $14 Million in Funding for Depression Device

Boston, Mass.-based Tal Medical, a clinical-stage medical device company developing a new treatment for depression and other psychiatric disorders, has received 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 percent and 10 percent of the U.S. 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, Ph.D. Madden was hired as the company’s executive vice president of product development. A medical device industry veteran, Madden brings 25 years of experience across multiple clinical areas. Prior to Tal Medical, he was the executive vice president of engineering at NinePoint Medical, a venture-backed imaging company, and has held several senior research and development roles at Boston Scientific, Medtronic and Bard.

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. 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).