SecondWave Systems has made a couple of major announcements. SecondWave Systems has welcomed Professor Paul Peter Tak as the inaugural member of its newly established advisory board. And SecondWave also announced that it has secured $3 million of additional funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) in partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), bringing the total non-dilutive funding from U.S. government agencies to $15.3 million.
Dr. Tak brings decades of experience as an academic physician-scientist, large pharma and biotechnology business leader, and entrepreneur. His pioneering preclinical and translational research at the Amsterdam University Medical Center was essential in clarifying the role of bioelectronic medicine as a therapeutic approach for autoimmune diseases.
Through highly relevant expertise as an internist, rheumatologist, and immunologist by training, Dr. Tak is an ideal addition to the SecondWave team by helping accelerate the development and commercialization of a new ultrasound-based therapeutic modality for treating rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other immune-mediated inflammatory conditions.
DARPA’s seed investment supported the initial development of the SecondWave MINI, a first-of-its-kind, wearable therapeutic ultrasound stimulation platform intended for the noninvasive and personalized treatment of chronic and acute inflammatory disorders.
This previous investment resulted in a human-grade wearable medical device recently investigated in a first-in-human clinical study in RA patients (NCT05417854), with positive efficacy outcomes. And this new funding round enables the implementation of the MINI technology platform in a pivotal clinical trial for at-home treatment of RA.
KEY QUOTES:
“Despite advances in treatment, there is still a significant unmet need for better treatments for chronic inflammatory diseases, like RA. 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.”
- Tak
“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. We continue to pursue comprehensive and rigorous scientific data to support the efficacy and broad capabilities of our novel therapeutic modality; so, it is critical to team up with highly 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.”
- SecondWave CEO Anuj Bhardwaj
