___

Sanofi Backs Click Ther­a­peu­tics as Dig­i­tal Med­i­cines Gain Momen­tum (Xcon­o­my):

“Drug mak­ers are mak­ing more bets on the nascent field of dig­i­tal med­i­cine. The lat­est exam­ple: Click Ther­a­peu­tics announced Mon­day that it grabbed a $17 mil­lion invest­ment led by Sanofi Ven­tures, the Cam­bridge, MA-based ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of the French phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant. Read the rest of this entry »

___

Time for Sharp­Brains’ eNewslet­ter, bring­ing you lat­est news around med­ica­tion, brain train­ing, sup­ple­ments, mind-wan­der­ing, dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics, wear­ables, and more — and also a few quick brain teasers to wrap-up.

New research:

• Con­sis­tent use of ADHD med­ica­tion may stunt growth by 2 inch­es, large study finds
• Mind-wan­der­ing may help enhance cre­ativ­i­ty, job per­for­mance and gen­er­al well-being, stud­ies show
• The ulti­mate in trans­fer from brain train­ing to real-world out­comes: Reduc­ing the risk of at-fault acci­dents by almost 50%

New thinking:

• AARP, TINA.org and the Nation­al Con­sumers League join forces to chal­lenge Pre­vagen mem­o­ry improve­ment claims
• Rein­vent­ing Brain Med­i­cine, phar­ma adopts dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics: Evi­dence-based videogames, smart­phone apps, and sen­sors
• For­get the Oscars — the Greater Good­ies hon­or ten films that high­light the growth mind­set, resilience, and more

New tools:

• Next in clin­i­cal prac­tice: Auto­mat­ed real-time detec­tion of seizures via wear­able EMG devices
• DARPA invests in non­sur­gi­cal neu­rotech­nolo­gies for even­tu­al use in healthy human sub­jects

Final­ly, we have a cou­ple of fun, quick brain teasers for you, and also a selec­tion of arti­cles to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week 2018.

Have a great spring,

The Sharp­Brains Team

___

From app store to drug store, dig­i­tal health is redefin­ing pharma’s pipeline (STAT):

“The pitch­es always sound­ed promis­ing: A new soft­ware app could track glu­cose lev­els for peo­ple with dia­betes or soothe the brains of insom­ni­acs. Most phar­ma exec­u­tives would polite­ly smile and nod, but then park their mon­ey some­where else.

Not any­more. Read the rest of this entry »

___

Albert, what sur­prised you the most from the Judges’ ques­tions and feed­back dur­ing the Brain­no­va­tions Pitch Con­test?

It was a pleas­ant sur­prise to receive so many votes and such great feed­back, which solid­i­fied my con­vic­tion that there is a great need to cre­ate new ther­a­py options for stroke patients and oth­er neu­ro­log­i­cal injuries, espe­cial­ly giv­en our aging pop­u­la­tion.  Med­ical sys­tems world­wide will strug­gle to han­dle the grow­ing bur­den of chron­ic ill­ness­es unless we start act­ing soon.

In a nut­shell, what is the core idea behind AUG­MEN­Tx?

The core idea is to lever­age visu­al-cog­ni­tive and visu­al-motor/sen­so­ry con­nec­tions of the brain to enhance per­for­mance in dis­ease states.  For exam­ple, mir­ror ther­a­py takes advan­tage of the mir­ror neu­ron path­way to improve post-stroke motor recov­ery and to alle­vi­ate phan­tom limb pain in limb amputees.  And we believe that these ther­a­pies can be deliv­ered on dig­i­tized AR plat­forms, instead of being always con­fined to few spe­cial­ized phys­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­ters.  Why not have them be acces­si­ble from the patient’s home Read the rest of this entry »

___

Pear Ther­a­peu­tics rakes in $50M to devel­op addi­tion­al dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics (Mobi­Health­News):

“Boston- and San Fran­cis­co-based Pear Ther­a­peu­tics, mak­er of a pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic plat­form, announced today the clo­sure of $50 mil­lion in Series B fund­ing. The round was led by Sin­ga­pore-based invest­ment com­pa­ny Temasek, with par­tic­i­pa­tion from return­ing investors 5AM Ven­tures, Arbore­tum Ven­tures, and JAZZ Ven­ture Part­ners, as well as new part­ners Novar­tis, EDBI, and the Bridge Builder’s Col­lab­o­ra­tive Read the rest of this entry »