Octave Bioscience lands $14M to bring expertise in chronic neurodegenerative markets and molecular Insights for improved care.
Octave Bioscience, a Menlo Park, CA-based developer of a fully integrated care management platform delivering powerful insights for patients with neurodegenerative diseases, today announced it has raised $14 million in Series A funding. The round was led by BCBS Venture Partners with participation from Echo Health Ventures (a strategic collaboration of Cambia Health Solutions and Mosaic Health Solutions), Section 32 and new as well as existing private investors.
The funding will be used to complete development of its proprietary, first-in-class platform and begin to evaluate the impact of the platform in its initial disease state, multiple sclerosis.
Multiple Sclerosis
According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, MS is a chronic, lifelong, debilitating disease, which affects nearly one million patients in the US. The disease is driven by autoimmune and inflammatory processes as well as neurodegeneration, including demyelination and axonal damage. As of 2010, lifetime costs were estimated to be $4.1 million,1 and the overall employment rate for patients with MS ranges between 30 and 45 percent due to cumulative disease burden and disability.2 While there are now 15 approved treatments, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society estimates that drugs cost up to $66-86,000 per year.
Octave Bioscience was founded to deliver an end-to-end care management platform for multiple sclerosis and a full range of neurodegenerative diseases. Octave’s three layer model of biological, clinical and economic data combined with sophisticated analytics, contextualization, machine learning and AI provide new insights for Physicians, Patients, Payers, and Pharma.
Its first product, currently in development and anticipated for launch in 2019, will employ biomarker solutions, patient tracking tools and MRI optimization to provide neurologists and MS patients robust, objective metrics to facilitate informed care and shared decision making for better patient outcomes.
“Multiple sclerosis represents a large, underserved $28 billion market. Like many chronic diseases, MS historically has been managed through subjective evaluation of signs and symptoms along with periodic MRI scans, which often don’t provide dynamic or real-time insight into the disease,” said William A. Hagstrom, Founder and CEO of Octave Bioscience. “Moreover, physicians can miss important shifts in disease status or co-morbidities between office visits. Octave’s care management solution was designed to start with a measurement system that includes assessing a patient’s biology via select biomarkers tied to inflammatory disease activity and neurodegeneration. This is further complemented by technology to continuously track patients’ symptoms and disease trajectory using sensors and mobile tools. Additionally, we are optimizing MRIs to improve contextualization, quantification and serial changes over time. Each of these capabilities provide high-resolution, 360-degree, longitudinal data streams to integrate into our care platform.”
