NeuraLight Raises $5.5M in Seed Funding

NeuraLight

NeuraLight, an Austin, Texas and Tel Aviv, Israel-based company treating neurological disorders by digitizing neurology care, launched out of stealth with $5.5m in seed funding.

Backers included MSAD, Kli, Tuesday, Operator Partners, and VSC Ventures, as well as 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.

Co-founded by CEO Micha Breakstone and Edmund Ben-Ami, NeuraLight aims to enhance the lives of people suffering from neurological disorders by digitizing neurological evaluation and care. Using video generated by a standard smartphone or web camera, the company 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, helping accelerate clinical trials and increase the probability of success of future therapies for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, and other neurodegenerative diseases. 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 integrate and scale NeuraLight into clinical trials and in remote settings, while also improving the patient experience.

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. 

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.

FinSMEs

29/10/2021