Tal Medical raises $14m for non-invasive anti-depression device

Tal Medical said today that it landed a $14 million Series B round it plans to use in backing clinical trials for its low-field magnetic stimulation technology as a non-invasive neurostimulation treatment for depression and bipolar disorder.

Boston-based Tal Medical said existing backer PureTech, a new institutional investor and several "prominent" but unnamed individual investors. The cash will also go toward product development and to "scale up the organization," Tal said.

President & CEO Jan Skvarka, the company’s 1st full-time chief executive, told MassDevice.com that the clinical-stage company is hoping to be 1 of the 1st to explore a potential new vertical for medtech: Psychiatry.

"When I think of the medical device space, I think that there’s all these verticals – cardiology, $45 billion, orthopedics, $40 billion, imaging, urology and so on. We’re asking the question, ‘Is there a future in the medical device world where there is a vertical for psychiatry that is several billion dollars?’ We’re at the beginning of that vertical," Skvarka told us.

If the early data proves out Tal Medical plans to go to a pivotal trial, possibly as soon as 2017, he said.

"We have to validate the early results in large-scale clinical trials," Skvarka said.

"Our new and existing investors understand the game-changing potential for Tal Medical to help people living with depression, bipolar disorder and other psychiatric disorders," he noted in prepared remarks. "Their support is critical to advancing our efforts towards addressing a major unmet need in psychiatry by developing a safe, rapid-acting treatment for patients."

Tal Medical also said it hired medtech veteran Mike Madden to be its executive vice president of product development and added Dr. Raju Kucherlapati of the Harvard Medical School to its board of directors.

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