Near-Billion-Yuan Series B+ Financing Completed by HuiChuang Medical to Advance fNIRS-Based Brain Function Imaging and Neuromodulation Therapies

Jun 04, 2024 20:35 CST Updated 20:35

Huichuang Medical

Near-Infrared Brain Function Imaging Product Developer

Source of the article: Siyu MedTech; Editor: Seven Kite

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Recently,Danyang Huichuang Medical Equipment Co., Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as "Huichuang Medical", "the Company") completedNearly 100 Million Yuan in B+ Round Financing, which is the second hundred-million-level financing the company has received within half a year.

This round of financing was jointly led by Xingfu Capital and Shengjing Jicheng. The funds will be used to strengthen the leading brand advantage of Danyang Huichuang Medical Equipment Co., Ltd. in the market for near-infrared (fNIRS) brain function imaging, as well as for clinical trials and team recruitment for transcranial light modulation treatment of degenerative diseases. Changhai Capital continues to serve as the exclusive financial advisor for the company's financing.

# Market Overview

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO),More than 8.5 million people worldwide suffer from Parkinson's disease, over 55 million people have dementia, and approximately 280 million people suffer from depression.。

In China, the number of patients with brain diseases is large,Among them, there are about 10 million Alzheimer's patients aged 60 and above. As early as 2016, the population with autism exceeded 10 million, and there are approximately 48 million people with depression.`, placing a heavy burden on families and society.`

Brain diseases are a huge challenge for humanity, and there is a global lack of effective treatments. The bottleneck lies in the limitations of brain cognition, which severely hinder the understanding of the mechanisms of brain diseases. Therefore, brain science research holds great significance.

From the invasive brain-computer interface platform Neuralink gaining repeated favor in the capital market, to MIT Professor Li-Huei Tsai's publication of several groundbreaking studies on clearing Alzheimer's Aβ protein, and then to the proposal and official implementation of China's "Brain Project," a "whirlwind" of financing in the field of brain science has swept through China.According to incomplete statistics, from 2022 to 2024, dozens of companies related to the brain science field in China have received financing.

Brain science has always been a major frontier academic issue. The understanding of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness on a biological basis was described by Nobel Prize winner in Medicine and Physiology, Eric Kandel, as the "ultimate challenge" in the biological sciences. As a discipline with large initial investments, high barriers, and slow returns, brain science projects that have not yet entered the industrial transformation and industry application stage are increasingly struggling to gain support from the capital market amid a tightening capital market environment.

# Near-Infrared (fNIRS) Functional Brain Imaging

fNIRS Brain Function Imaging Equipment is known as "Functional MRI Worn on the Head", due to itsNon-invasive, Portable, AccurateThe performance advantages have rapidly gained attention in both scientific research and clinical settings in recent years. According to statistics from Google Scholar, currently,Each year, the number of publications related to fNIRS exceeds 5,000 globally.Famous institutions such as Harvard Medical School, Stanford University, Mayo Clinic, and the University of Tokyo have published a large number of high-impact articles.

Clinically, the application of fNIRS in China has covered thousands of tertiary hospitals and is widely used in departments such as psychiatry, rehabilitation, neurology, and pediatrics. It shows great potential as a next-generation biomarker for the detection and rehabilitation evaluation of various diseases, including depression, autism, cognitive impairment, and stroke rehabilitation.

In addition to the currently relatively mature diagnostic paradigms, fNIRS is also a clinical and multi-field potential application tool with great imagination:

Clinical Field:Supports brain function solutions across multiple departments and fields, such as cognition, rehabilitation, emotion, psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, ENT, audiology, and ophthalmology, promoting the development of brain disease and brain function examination. Widely used in auxiliary disease assessment, early screening, prognosis evaluation, efficacy prediction, real-time treatment feedback, and optimization of diagnosis and treatment plans.
Education and Sports Sector:Explore the brain intelligence development rules of individual learning and training, assist in style discrimination of learning and training, mental state monitoring, improvement of training effects and competitive levels; assist in optimizing the quality evaluation of teaching and training and measurement of teaching effectiveness;
Field of Industrial Safety:Explore the real-time monitoring of mental and psychological states to drive key industrial processes, optimize job matching, scientifically schedule project timelines, and promptly identify abnormalities in personnel health. Provide new industrial safety solutions for scenarios with extremely high safety standards, such as power grids, hazardous chemical transportation, and fleet logistics.
Cultural and Entertainment Field:Through the interaction scheme of fNIRS technology, combined with the metaverse, virtual reality, and augmented reality, it promotes brain-state-based interaction control and user-state perception, enhancing user immersion.
Aging Health and Wellness Field:Timely alerts for brain health, brain load, brain cognition, brain fatigue, and other states to achieve early warning and intervention for abnormal mental health and vital signs. Relying on brain-computer interface technology for early screening and intervention of important physiological functions in the elderly, promoting the maintenance, recovery, or enhancement of related functions.

Moreover, in the field of brain-computer interfaces, non-invasive brain-computer interface interaction platforms based on fNIRS technology offer advantages over other types of brain-computer interaction interfaces.With significant advantages such as easy installation and debugging, good physiological response stability, high spatial resolution, strong resistance to electromagnetic interference, strong resistance to motion interference, and convenient and comfortable wearing,It is the ideal information interaction interface and solution for brain-computer interfaces and brain-inspired intelligence technologies. It has broad application prospects in areas such as motor imagery brain-computer interfaces and cognitive brain-computer interfaces.

# About Huichuang Medical

Huichuang Medical (Danyang Huichuang Medical Equipment Co., Ltd.) is an innovative national high-tech enterprise transformed from the scientific research achievements of Beihang University. The company's chief scientistDr. Wang DaifaProfessor at Beihang University, graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor's and Ph.D., focusing on research and exploration in the field of brain science. Served as a visiting scholar at the California Institute of Technology (the alma mater of Mr. Qian Xuesen) in the United States, and currently also serves as a specially appointed expert at Hangzhou Seventh People's Hospital.

The company has a high-level master's and doctoral R&D team, graduated from world-class universities such as the California Institute of Technology, Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beihang University, Tianjin University, and Beijing Normal University.

The company independently developedWorld's First Medical Device-Certified Floor-Standing Near-Infrared Brain Function Imaging Equipment with Over 100 Channels (NirScan)、World's First Portable Near-Infrared Brain Function Imaging Device to Obtain a Medical Device Certificate and the World's Highest Channel Infrared Brain Function Imaging Device to Obtain China Medical Device Registration。

▲Source: Official Website

Since its launch, the product has been characterized by its "high-end and sophisticated" equipment attributes,Awarded the "Huang Jiaxi Biomedical Engineering Award," the highest scientific and technological award in China's biomedical engineering field, recognized as the first major equipment set in Jiangsu Province, and included in the directory of new technologies and products for key promotion and application in Jiangsu Province.。

The fNIRS innovative products of Danyang Huichuang Medical Equipment Co., Ltd. have provided new research tools, created new research methods, and opened up new research fields for the academic research community and clinical medicine community. As of the end of March 2024, the fNIRS series of products from Huichuang Medical have supported expert users in publishing 241 SCI papers in top journals such as "Nature Human Behaviour," "Advanced Functional Materials," "NeuroImage," "Cerebral Cortex," and "Asian Journal of Psychiatry," which is an increase of over 50% compared to the time of the company's Series B financing in September 2023.

Huichuang Medical's team keeps optimizing and growing. It has currently built a complete sales system covering medical institutions and scientific research institutes across China, and achieved sales coverage in overseas regions such as Southeast Asia.

As of the date of publication, the company's financing history is as follows: