SecondWave Systems Secures Funding, Names Inaugural Advisory Board Member

SecondWave Systems Inc. has welcomed Professor Paul Peter Tak, M.D., Ph.D., as the inaugural member of its newly established advisory board. The firm also has secured $3 million in funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), in partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

With the ARPA-H/DARPA money, SecondWave has received $15.3 million in non-dilutive U.S. government funding. Seed investment from DARPA supported the initial development of the SecondWave MINI, a first-of-its-kind, wearable therapeutic ultrasound stimulation platform designed to provide noninvasive and personalized treatment of chronic and acute inflammatory disorders. Prior investments helped fund a first-in-human study of a wearable medical device for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. This new funding will help finance an RA clinical trial for the company’s at-home RA treatment via its MINI technology platform.

“As we work to commercialize the SecondWave MINI as a new class of therapy for inflammatory disease, we are very excited to enter the next phase of development with continued support from our government partners at DARPA and ARPA-H, and with complementary expertise from Dr. Tak as an advisory board member,” SecondWave CEO Anuj Bhardwaj said. “We continue to pursue scientific data to support the efficacy and capabilities of our therapeutic modality; so, it is critical to team up with knowledgeable and respected scientists, clinicians, and federal agencies to successfully achieve our company’s mission to establish bio-ultrasonic medicine as a new standard of care for treating disease.”

In addition to bringing decades of experience as an academic physician-scientist, large pharmaceutical and biotechnology business leader, and entrepreneur, Dr. Tak’s prior preclinical and translational research at the Amsterdam University Medical Center (AUMC) was pivotal in elucidating the role of bioelectronic medicine as a therapeutic approach for autoimmune diseases. Dr. Tak earned his medical degree cum laude from the AUMC and was trained as an internist, rheumatologist, and immunologist at Leiden University Medical Center, where he also received his Ph.D. He worked as a scientist at the University of California San Diego and next served as professor of Medicine and chair of the Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology at AUMC. He has studied the role of the vagus nerve in chronic inflammation, work which provided the basis for clinical trials exploring bioelectronics as a novel therapeutic approach in rheumatoid arthritis patients.
 
He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals (roughly 600 publications, H index 146), received numerous awards, has been elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK), is a PharmaVOICE100 honoree, was included in “The Medicine Maker Power List 2023,” and ranked No. 120 in the 2023 Edition of the World Ranking of Top 1000 Scientists in immunology.
 
At GlaxoSmithKline he served as senior vice president, chief immunology officer, and global development leader. He has been CEO of Tempero Pharmaceuticals and Kintai Therapeutics, is a co-founder of Sitryx, and is xhair of Citryll. In 2020, he became president and CEO of Candel Therapeutics.
 
“Despite advances in treatment, there is still a significant unmet need for better treatments for chronic inflammatory diseases, like RA,” Dr. Tak stated. “One area of unmet need is for therapies that specifically target the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, a natural mechanism in the body that helps control inflammation. It is activated by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is released within the spleen. SecondWave’s MINI system could potentially provide a noninvasive tool to control inflammation by activation of this and other anti-inflammatory pathways through the spleen.”
 
SecondWave Systems is a bio-ultrasonic medicine innovator. The company is developing a first-of-its-kind noninvasive, wearable, and personalized ultrasound stimulation platform that will give patients and their physicians a new option for treating debilitating or life-threatening disease. The company’s SecondWave MINI device uses proprietary low-intensity focused ultrasound technology to stimulate the spleen to treat acute and chronic inflammation disorders. This technology is being investigated in clinical studies to treat rheumatoid arthritis, and additional studies are planned to investigate use in other inflammatory conditions.