"Ultrasound Brain Cleaning" Sonocare Lab Raises Seed Funding from Bluepoint

Developing ultrasound technology to help clear waste products from the brain
Plans to use it alongside antibody treatments for Alzheimer's disease

Sonocare Lab, an ultrasound-based medical device startup focused on brain diseases, announced on October 29 that it had raised seed funding from deep-tech accelerator Bluepoint Partners. The investment is understood to reflect the high regard for its technology, which uses ultrasound to help remove waste products accumulated in the brain without surgery.

Recently, new treatment possibilities have opened up in the field of Alzheimer’s disease, with the emergence of antibody therapies such as lecanemab and donanemab that target amyloid beta, a protein that accumulates in the brain. Sonocare Lab believes treatment outcomes could improve if the process of clearing waste products from the brain and eliminating them from the body could be supported alongside these drug therapies.

To this end, the company has focused on the brain’s natural clearance system, the glymphatic system. This system is a kind of brain-cleaning mechanism in which cerebrospinal fluid and fluid between brain tissues circulate to wash away waste products. Sonocare Lab is developing a medical device that uses ultrasound to promote this circulation.

The company’s core technology, Acoustic Brain Sweeper, moves ultrasound in a specific direction to stimulate the flow of fluid inside the brain. The principle is to promote circulation involved in removing waste products.

Park Jinhyung, CEO of Sono Care Lab (right). Sono Care Lab

Sonocare Lab plans to develop this technology into a medical device for use alongside existing antibody treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. While the drugs target the substances that cause the buildup in the brain, the ultrasound medical device is intended to improve treatment outcomes by helping remove waste products.

Sonocare Lab was founded on foundational ultrasound technology developed by Professor Park Jinhyeong of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University while he was carrying out a project under the Samsung Future Technology Development Program. After earning a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Southern California (USC), CEO Park Jinhyeong led the development and commercialization of ultrasound systems at Siemens Korea’s ultrasound research center and Philips in the United States.

Park Sooyong, a director at Bluepoint who led the investment, emphasized, “Central nervous system diseases, including Alzheimer’s, remain areas of significant unmet medical need, where new therapeutic approaches beyond drug treatment are required.”

CEO Park Jinhyeong said, “Our goal is to complement the changes in Alzheimer’s treatment ushered in by antibody therapies with the brain’s natural waste-removal system. Drawing on our experience in developing ultrasound medical devices, we will first enter the market for medical devices used alongside antibody therapies, and in the long term, grow this into a platform for use in treating a range of central nervous system diseases.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.