Salvia Bioelectronics, a Dutch medtech startup building on results from ECSEL JU medical projects - InForMed, POSITION-II and Moore4Medical - is developing an innovative neurostimulation solution to treat people suffering from chronic migraine. The company has been founded in 2017 by neuromodulation industry members that previously founded and ran Sapiens Steering Brain Stimulation B.V. with the ambition to develop a bioelectronics therapy for people suffering from neurological disease, that is as easy as taking medication, yet side-effect free.
Most people who are prone to headaches, get painful attacks once or twice a month. But if a person suffers from a chronic migraine, they experience extraordinary headaches more than half of the month. These severe and frequent attacks can make living a normal life a real challenge. The condition is estimated to affect one out of seven people, mostly women, and is considered to be the prime cause of disability in people under 50-years-old.
Up until now, both migraine and chronic migraines could be treated with drugs. These include medications that treat the pain and symptoms, like severe pain throbbing, vomiting or nausea, as well as drugs that treat the underlying cause of migraine. In some cases, there are medical devices you can use to interrupt the headache. Still, no treatment known until now was fully effective, taking a toll on many people's quality of life.
Salvia Bioelectronics is developing new solution for treating migraines, which will be extremely unobtrusive and as easy as taking drugs, yet much more effective - the company is working on creating an implantable treatment, in the form of an ultra thin bioelectronic foil. Neurostimulation has already been proven to be an effective treatment for chronic migraine, but there is no implantable device yet available in the market. The device developed by Salvia will be designed to be placed under the skin to cover the nerves of the head during a minimally invasive surgical procedure.
Separately from the grants from ECSEL JU for their participation in collaborative RD&I projects, the company receives financial support from a number of private investors and has raised €26m in new financing from new and existing stakeholders. Salvia BioElectronics CEO, Hubert Martens, expressed the company's hopes: “We are building a team of highly talented people that are passionate to develop a therapy that can change the lives of people suffering from chronic migraine. We are delighted to welcome our new investors, and I would like to thank our existing investors for their continued support. This strong syndicate of highly renowned medical technology investors validates our approach and the funding enables us to complete our therapy development towards market entry.”
Photo credits: Salvia Bioelectronics
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