You Are What You Think: How New Brain Care Advances Are Increasingly Person-Centered

It’s an exciting time in the field of brain science.

Researchers are working on new speech analysis tools for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.

New studies have shown that retina scans can be used to detect early signs of the disease, long before typical symptoms show up.

And blood and brain metabolites are being used as early biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease. That’s right, we may soon have blood tests as part of the diagnostic process.

All of this is part of medical science’s ongoing push to better understand the brain and the disorders that affect it.

The human brain generates enough electricity to power a light bulb and processes 70,000 thoughts each day. It uses 100 billion neurons that connect at more than 500 trillion points through synapses that travel 300 miles per hour. Not only does it create thoughts, but it also drives the emotions and stores the memories that define who we are and how we understand ourselves in the world.

And no two brains are exactly alike.

Each person’s anatomy is influenced by both genetics and life experiences, a discovery that is changing the way researchers and clinicians approach brain health.

So, what happens when the brain slows down or starts to misfire? According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people living with dementia is currently estimated at 47 million and is projected to increase to 82 million by 2030 and 152 million by 2050. It’s an expensive diagnosis, with dementia costing the US an estimated $818 billion per year.

Contrary to popular belief, dementia not a normal part of aging. It is a syndrome caused by a variety of brain illnesses that impact memory, thinking, and behavior, eventually limiting the ability to perform everyday activities.

Brain health is more important than ever. Tackling impairments, including but not limited to Alzheimer’s, is a high priority, with the National Institute on Aging appropriations doubling from $1.05 billion in 2013 to $2.05 billion in 2017. Here’s what science is doing to help our brains stay healthy and deliver the right signals.

Tackling age: Personalized Brain Care

Sixteen million people in the US are currently living with age-related cognitive impairments (ACRIs). But, none of those patients are exactly the same. Now, researchers are borrowing the principles of precision medicine to prevent and treat ACRIs in more tailored ways, according to a study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.

Because we know that lifestyle (including exercise, nutrition, medical risks such as high cholesterol, social interaction, and mental fitness) impact our risk factors for dementia and other impairments, new research is helping to identify modifiable risk factors that can help clinicians develop specific targets for intervention and prevention efforts.

The research identifies major risk categories including cardiovascular insufficiency, immune disruption, and chronic stress. The factors of these conditions cause brain drivers including brain inflammation, compromised brain flow, increased neuropathology, and altered synaptic connectivity. Ultimately, these brain drivers fast-track the development of cognitive disorders.

An individual’s gene variants also play a role, acting to increase the impact of a risk category or protect against risk categories.

The combination of risk factors, brain drivers, and gene variants have helped researchers to develop a Precision Aging Model. Similar to how precision medicine changes the question from “Does treatment X work?” to “Who does treatment X work for?,” the Precision Aging Model helps to prevent and treat the diseases that we as individuals are uniquely predisposed to.

Monitoring and Capturing Brain Signals

As the number of patients suffering from brain-related disorders is on the rise, so is the growth of the market for wireless brain sensors. Wireless brain sensors monitor the neurological fluctuations and help to improve cognitive functionalities particularly for populations suffering from dementia, Parkinson’s, traumatic brain injuries, and other brain disorders.

New technology is working to capture and manage the signals that the brain sends. For example, Neuros Medical has developed an Electrical Nerve Block technology that treats chronic pain in a variety of applications including post-amputation pain, chronic post-surgical pain, and chronic migraines by intercepting signals that the brain sends to the nervous system. The technology delivers a high-frequency electrical signal to sensory nerves in the peripheral nervous system to block the pain signal. The system consists of an electrode (also known as a lead) placed around a peripheral nerve and an implantable pulse generator (IPG).

Stanford researchers are trying to take it one step further, developing implantable brain sensors that can record and decipher the electrical activity of neurons that control body movement; the goal of which is to design prosthetics that amputees and those with paralysis can control with their thoughts. This technology tracks the activity of individual neurons and decodes neural activity in the aggregate, rather than one-by-one.

If you ask a brain expert, they might tell you that we are what we think.

Before we pick up the keys on the way out the door, our brains send a multitude of messages that tell our bodies to do it. But what happens when we start to forget? Or when our brains send our bodies the wrong messages (like triggering pain in a missing limb)?

Our brains are as unique as we are. And, brain science is becoming increasingly better at understanding what our brains are trying to communicate.

Consideration

With 2021 well underway and with public markets still strong, we think it is an important time to highlight some of the key private market, venture investment themes that iSelect fund has identified for the year. We believe technologies transforming the Agriculture, Food and Wellness markets will flourish, with a focus on four areas: technologies that enable better food choices to drive better health outcomes, technologies that drive better, more profitable farm operations, technologies that drive the Consumerization of Healthcare, and biome-based treatment technologies. At iSelect, we invest for impact AND performance. We offer qualified investors access to emerging growth companies through our national venture capital strategy. Our unique structure allows our investors to continue to invest in these companies as they develop.

Timing

Why is now the right time for venture? The answer is that now is not explicitly the right time. Venture is something we need in our economy at all times. Now is not better than any other particular time. The question is, why ever stop? When we look at the challenges we’re facing in food and healthcare the reality is there is someone, somewhere who has an insight about how to build a product that will solve those problems. And if they put the right resources to it, they will succeed. As long as we need new technology to make life better or make our lives more enjoyable, we need venture capital to help fuel those entrepreneurs.

What is iSelect as a product?

iSelect is a very unique product, but when you break it into its parts it’s fairly easy to understand. On the front end we’re a traditional venture capital fund. We have a diligence process. We have an investment process. We have categories of industries where we have focus and real expertise, and we invest in companies in those areas that meet requirements for the fund. On the back end we’re unique in that we don’t raise a large amount of capital at one time and deploy it over the life of our fund. Each deal that we bring onto the fund, our investors have to prove and determine to invest in that deal. We have to constantly prove our diligence standards. It’s accessible, transparent and easy for investors to come in and see our comprehensive process.

What is the ideal iSelect company?

We are looking for founders that are passionate and we want the problem they’re trying to solve to be big, real, and painful. We want the solution to be revolutionary and we want our capital to be able to help them solve that problem. We want to know that they have customers involved and that the solution they’ve come up with actually meets those customers’ and market needs. And we want the team to be capital efficient with the money they’re spending.

What does the ideal iSelect company look like?

We’re looking for a company that has an opportunity to have a 10x return to our investment or greater in a period of three to seven years. What excites us at iSelect are companies that are solving big problems. We want companies that are going to be the Monsantos of the future. Not just in the size and the scope, but the impact they have on people’s lives. We want to create positive impacts on people’s lives, so we invest in areas like agricultural production and areas like producing healthy foods for our kids. They are problems that impact real people’s lives on a daily basis. That’s what we’re trying to do at iSelect. We’re trying to solve the big problems out there. Find ways to bring capital to the entrepreneurs who are the real heroes out there getting up every morning, beating away at these things that are problems that you and me and everyone else faces in their everyday lives.

What is iSelect?

iSelect is a venture capital firm. What that means is we look at hundreds and hundreds of different companies and we apply tough diligence standards to each of them, looking at whether the team has a good plan for growing the business, whether the team is qualified and credible, and more. We do that to resolve the few who provide the best opportunities for investors. And then iSelect takes that smaller set of investments and goes to investors who are interested in venture capital and provides a way for them to invest in these companies, either individually or all at once. We co-invest alongside other venture capitalists. We source transactions through to an exit where the company would become public or get bought. And we manage that whole investment process on behalf of our investors.