In Deep Brain Stimulation, Sapiens Adopts Wise Model

Article preview from Start-Up - June 1, 2011

In early June, young company Sapiens Steering Brain Stimulation raised the largest Series A round that a device company in Europe, perhaps even in they US, has enjoyed in five years. Sapiens aims to solve several key challenges hindering deep brain stimulation: divorcing the therapeutic effect of stimulation from the unintended side effects, making the device MRI-compatible and providing physicians with an integrated image-guided procedure.

In Deep Brain Stimulation, Sapiens Adopts Wise Model

Article preview from Start-Up - June 1, 2011

In early June, young company Sapiens Steering Brain Stimulation GMBH raised €13 million ($18.6 million) from its Series A round, co-led by Wellington Partners and Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners.  Life Sciences Partners also participated. The financing was the largest Series A round for a European device company since 2005, and it certainly ranks near the top of the list of Series A device financings on the other side of the Atlantic as well. The company has a preclinical stage device in an emerging field, so the vote of confidence on the part of early stage investors is all the more unusual.

But like many start-ups funded these days, Sapiens is older than it looks. Founded in 2011, the company had a four-plus year head start in the folds of the Philips Research Laboratories division of Royal Philips Electronics NV in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Co-founder Michel Decré, at the time a principal scientist with Philips, says the Sapiens deep brain stimulation (DBS) project began six years ago, when, while scouting for adjacent growth opportunities, Philips Research hit upon neuromodulation. In particular, the deep brain stimulation market, created by Medtronic Inc., presented promising markets, pressing patient problems, and technology in need of improvement. Speaking with neurosurgeons and other clinicians, the Philips team set out to solve several key challenges with deep brain stimulation: divorcing the therapeutic effect of stimulation from unintended side effects, making the device MRI-compatible and providing physicians with an integrated image-guided procedure.

The team's initial focus is on Parkinson's disease, where validated targets in the brain provided a known starting point. The dynamics here are also favorable because Medtronic has established a regulatory pathway and a market, having treated 80,000 patients worldwide to date, and most countries in Europe reimburse DBS treatments for Parkinson's patients. Still, side effects from stimulation paradigms – unintended consequences like speech impairment or difficulty in focusing vision, for example – created an opening for companies that could solve these problems.

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