36Kr learned that recently, "Dome Medical" (full name: Xi'an Dome Medical Technology Co., Ltd.) completed tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round of financing, co-led by Shaanxi Investment Growth Fund and Oriza Origin, followed by Zhongxin Group, Xi'an Finance, Xi'an Talent Development Fund, Fengrui and Shunwei continued to invest;
It is understood that Dome Medical was established in November 2019, focusing on non-invasive deep brain neuromodulation technology, and completed an angel round of financing at the beginning of this year, invested by Frees Capital and Shunwei Capital.
The core team of Dome Medical is mainly from the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Sciences, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and has rich technical reserves and accumulation in neuromodulation. The team has been focusing on TI technology since 2015, and was approved as a national nature-related project in 2017, with a total of nearly 1,000 animal experiments and nearly 100 human clinical cases in 8 years. Dr. Li Long, co-founder and CEO, graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University, focusing on nervous system function intervention technology, and Wang Yu, co-founder and chief scientist, is a well-known expert in the field of neuromodulation in China and serves as the vice chairman of the China Neuromodulation Association.
At present, there are nearly 130 million patients with various brain diseases in China, and many patients are deeply troubled by depression, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and other diseases.
In 2023, Shanghai Ruijin Hospital has widely disseminated reports on the treatment of treatment-resistant depression through invasive implantation of DBS (deep brain stimulation) devices to regulate deep brain nuclei. DBS technology has been used in clinical practice for the treatment of Parkinson's disease for many years, and now domestic and foreign manufacturers are actively expanding indications such as depression and autism, but due to the need for craniotomy and implantation of electrodes and wires in the deep brain during treatment, some patients are unable to bear it. Therefore, according to the literature survey of Tiantan Hospital, the current DBS penetration rate is only 1.1%. Professor Fang Shirujiao, director of the Department of Psychology of Ruijin Hospital, commented that the drug of depression and mental illness has reached a bottleneck, and no new varieties of drugs have appeared, so physical therapy such as TI has the potential for clinical application at this stage.
To understand the TI stimulation technology developed by Dome Medical, we first need to understand two basic principles: first, due to the capacitive characteristics of brain neurons, neurons do not respond to high-frequency signals, and second, two electromagnetic waves with similar frequencies can be partially coherent when they meet, so two external electrodes are used to send out high-frequency currents, which can form an "envelope" of low-frequency electric field in the deep brain and "interfere" with specific positions in the deep brain, so as to achieve non-invasive deep EEG stimulation and regulate neurons.
Schematic diagram of the TI stimulation principle
Through years of animal experiments, theoretical verification, algorithm simulation and parameter proofreading, Dome Medical has verified that the spatial position of the TI stimulus focus is controllable and does not damage the neurons in the brain. In order to output effective TI stimulation solutions, Dome Medical has carried out 6 iterations of non-invasive deep brain neuromodulation TI products since 2019, solving technical application problems such as intracranial spatial positioning, phase coordination of stimulation sources, and superposition of pulse intensity in non-invasive deep brain regulation technology.
The sixth-generation product TIs EMO-1000/TIs CAP has high precision for stimulation control, can output different modes of stimulation signals, and can adjust parameters according to clinical needs to achieve accurate, effective and reproducible treatment. It is understood that TI can be stimulated in the range of 0-80mm under the skull, and through non-invasive deep brain nerve regulation, the central nervous system can be precisely regulated by multiple targets, which is expected to be applied to Parkinson's, major depression, epilepsy, autism, trigeminal neuralgia and other indications.
Dome Medical's 6th Generation Non-invasive Deep Brain Neuromodulation Products(1)
Dome Medical's 6th Generation Non-invasive Deep Brain Neuromodulation Products(2)
In terms of clinical resources, Dome Medical has cooperated with more than 10 hospitals, such as Ruijin Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and Tangdu Hospital of the Air Force Military Medical University, to carry out clinical trials for indications such as depression and sleep disorders, and has achieved good clinical results. At this stage, dozens of cases of sleep regulation data have been collected, and the improvement effect after intervention has been evaluated through the connection status of five brain function networks, such as the default mode network and the dorsal attention network.
In response to the contrarian financing, Li Long, the founder of Dome Medical, believes that the company's basic R&D capabilities, market promotion speed and the potential application value of TI technology have become the main reasons to attract investors.
It is understood that in addition to non-invasive deep brain neuromodulation products and applications, Dome Medical will also develop implantable medical devices such as subcutaneous implantable devices, integrated implantable devices for acquisition and stimulation, and spinal cord neurostimulators.