NeuroQore is a brain startup company founded in 2011. The company aims to use magnetic brain stimulation technology to treat cognitive disorders. Here’s our NeuroQore review.
What Is NeuroQore?
NeuroQore is a brain science company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. The company was founded in 2011 and has gone through two rounds of funding from two investors, according to CrunchBase, raising an undisclosed amount of money.
NeuroQore specializes in magnetic brain stimulation technology. The company is preparing to commercialize a technology that could be used to revolutionize the treatment of major depressive disorders – including anxiety and depression.
That therapy unit could be used to treat people with a range of cognitive and psychiatric disorders.
How Does NeuroQore’s Technology Work?
NeuroQore’s technology relies on a patented monophasic repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) system with a potentially improved remission rate.
In layman’s terms, NeuroQore wants to shoot magnetic pulses into your brain to try to treat mental disorders like anxiety and depression.
This could be a more effective treatment than pharmaceutical-based treatments like drug therapy, and a safer therapy than something like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which is associated with a number of serious side effects.
The first unit of the NeuroQore rTMS system, according to the official NeuroQore.com website, was installed at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre in July 2015, where it successfully passed tolerability testing on healthy volunteers.
Now, NeuroQore is actively recruiting patients for the next round of testing.
They describe early results from their testing as “promising”, and that it has “prompted installation of more units to recruit more patients faster”.
Why NeuroQore’s Technology Is Important
Major depressive disorder affects about 5% of the world’s population. 1 in 3 of these people cannot recover using medications or therapy.
When doctors cannot treat a patient’s depression, it becomes categorized as treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Doctors typically prescribe electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to treat this form of depression, and it has a 60 to 70% remission rate.
ECT treatment, however, is hampered by the need for anesthesia. It’s also associated with significant cognitive side effects – not to mention a great deal of stigma. That’s why less than 1% of the population who have TRD receive ECT annually.
Essentially, patients with TRD are left with two choices: drugs, which are not very effective and come with side effects, or ECT, which is very effective but comes with serious side effects.
NeuroQore and other transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) technologies are emerging as a possible treatment for TRD. The therapy does not require anesthesia and is not associated with any cognitive side effects. It is also widely accepted by patients.
rTMS can be administered by a technician or nurse in an outpatient clinical setting. You don’t have to visit a hospital to receive treatment.
In early testing, rTMS has led to a 45 to 55% response rate and a 30 to 35% remission rate, which is comparable to somewhere between medication and ECT in terms of treating depression.
However, researchers are still encouraged by these numbers because the treatment comes with high tolerability and accessibility.
NeuroQore co-founder Mehran Talebinejad cited more impressive numbers when he told TechCrunch this past week that the treatment has “an 87.5 percent remission success rate over drug-resistant depression”.
How To Contact NeuroQore
You can contact NeuroQore by email at [email protected]. Or, the company’s official website at NeuroQore.com has an email form as well as contact information for the Ottawa, Newport Beach, and San Francisco offices.
NeuroQore is one of those futuristic technologies that has the potential to save the world – especially for patients with cognitive conditions. The technology is already approved in Canada, and the next step is to get FDA approval for the United States.
The latest TechCrunch article states that the company hopes to setup brain centers where patients can go and get magnetic stimulation throughout Canada later in 2017.
