Aikai Healthcare Completes Tens of Millions of RMB Angel Round Financing, Semi-Invasive Vagus Nerve Modulation Product Poised to Enter Clinical Registration

Aikai Healthcare, a developer of semi-invasive vagus nerve modulation devices, has recently completed a tens of millions of RMB angel round of financing led by Cui Capital. The funds raised will be primarily used for the construction of production facilities and the official clinical registration of its first Class III medical device product. Yingyue Chuangban served as the exclusive financial advisor for this round.

Aikai Healthcare was founded in 2021. Its founder, Mr. Zhu Wei, previously worked at GE Healthcare's United States headquarters and participated in multiple forward-looking technology research initiatives. In particular, he gained extensive experience through collaborative research on neuromodulation technologies led by the Mayo Clinic in partnership with GE. The company has independently developed semi-invasive precision vagus nerve modulation technology and launched several wearable products. Aikai Healthcare has partnered with multiple top-tier hospitals and conducted over a year of preclinical research involving conditions such as intractable pain, obstructive sleep apnea, post-stroke rehabilitation, depression, and insomnia, achieving an overall response rate of 91 percent.

Pain, including menstrual pain, rheumatoid arthritis pain, lower back pain, migraine, trigeminal neuralgia, postherpetic neuralgia, cancer pain, diabetic foot pain, and perioperative pain, affects over 300 million patients in China alone. However, widely used analgesic drugs, when taken long-term, carry significant toxicity and side effects, and are prone to inducing drug tolerance. In recent years, implantable central neuromodulation devices have emerged as a treatment option. Although their therapeutic efficacy is significant, patient acceptance and the applicable population remain limited. Consequently, only about 60 percent of patients with pain seek medical attention, and the rate of symptom relief is less than 20 percent.

It has long been confirmed in medical research that vagus nerve stimulation has significant therapeutic effects on conditions such as pain, depression, and insomnia. However, products already on the market both domestically and internationally commonly suffer from issues such as large device size, limited treatment time restricted to hospital settings, inaccurate stimulation of nerve targets, and a low proportion of effective stimulation signal transmission. These problems often lead to unsatisfactory treatment outcomes, low willingness among physicians to recommend the therapy, and poor patient compliance.

Aikai Healthcare's Self-Developed Semi-Invasive Transauricular Vagus Nerve Modulation Device

The research and development team at Aikai Healthcare has broken away from traditional thinking. Through a combination of complex algorithms and multiple proprietary technologies, they have not only resolved the long-standing challenges of effective low-frequency signal transmission and neural desensitization or habituation, achieving a duty cycle of up to 99 percent and rapid onset of action within 15 minutes, but have also accounted for neurological differences across the vast majority of the population, resulting in highly broad-spectrum therapeutic efficacy. Additionally, through the coordinated neuroimmune modulation of the brain-gut axis, the system reduces neuroinflammation or neuritis.

On the hardware front, the use of CNC high-precision machined matrix microneedles overcomes the skin's immune barrier. Coupled with a proprietary neural node localization device, stimulation signals are delivered precisely to the therapeutic target while avoiding needle retraction, migration, or back-out, which would otherwise significantly reduce effectiveness. Efficient power management reduces energy consumption and minimizes the device's size, allowing patients to wear the device continuously for several days of treatment, thereby improving patient compliance while maintaining therapeutic efficacy.