Medtech company Syntropic Medical, has raised €1.1 million in funding from The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) for its light-based brain stimulation device to treat drug-resistant neuropsychiatric disorders such as major depressive disorder.
The company spun out of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) by Mark Caffrey, Jack O’Keeffe, Dr Alessandro Venturino, and Prof Sandra Siegert.
Syntropic’s unique light-based brain stimulation device is based on a light stimulation protocol discovered by the Siegert Group at ISTA.
Their brain stimulation promotes microglia-mediated neuroplasticity, thereby opening up new avenues for treating a range of neuropsychiatric disorders, such as Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). With this, Syntropic aims to provide a new treatment option for patients who have failed to achieve an adequate response from traditional pharmaceutical therapies.
“Approximately 70 per cent of patients taking pharmaceutical antidepressants will fail to achieve remission, and up to 25 per cent will stop taking them due to the severity of side effects.
These numbers are unfortunately not good enough. Therefore, it is crucial that we begin to develop completely new methods of tackling these disorders.
This is why the discoveries of Dr Venturino and Prof Siegert are so exciting, they open the potential for an entirely new modality of treatment that is side effect free and easily accessible for the patient,” explains Mark Caffrey, Syntropic CEO.
The news follows 7-figure funding raised in April this year from xista science ventures and aws (the promotional bank of the Austrian federal government).
Lead image: Syntropic team: Sandra Siegert, CEO Mark Caffrey, CTO Jack O’Keeffe, and Head of Research Alessandro Venturino. Photo: uncredited.
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