Med-Tech Innovation News spoke to Renee Ryan, CEO of Cala Health, about its work tackling chronic diseases.
Tell us about your company. When did you establish yourself and what do you offer?
Cala Health is a bioelectronic medicine company transforming the standard of care for chronic diseases, beginning with essential tremor. Cala Trio, the company’s flagship product, is the only FDA-cleared, non-invasive prescription treatment that delivers individualised therapy for essential tremor. A wearable neuromodulation device merging innovations in neuroscience and technology, Cala Trio delivers customised peripheral nerve stimulation using data-driven insights. The company is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area and backed by leading investors in both healthcare and technology.
With a team of experts at the intersection of the medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and technology industries, Cala Trio was introduced to the U.S. market in 2018, reshaping the delivery of prescription therapies. The device is conveniently delivered to the patient’s home and Cala Health educates patients on how to best use the device according to their personal needs. Cala Trio is calibrated to the individual to deliver a high-quality patient experience, from prescription to user feedback. The team is motivated by the belief that wearable neuromodulation therapies will soon transform the standard of care for patients living with many chronic diseases.
Where did the idea for your start-up come from?
When Kate Rosenbluth, the founder and chief scientific officer of Cala Health, was a Stanford Biodesign Fellow, she was captivated by the challenging unmet need to treat hand tremors. For the seven million Americans living with Essential Tremor, the only options were partially effective pharmacotherapies that were often accompanied by unpleasant side effects, or brain surgery. She discovered that the site of deep brain stimulation was accessible through the peripheral nerves in the wrist and teamed up with Scott Delp, director of the Stanford Neuromuscular Biomechanics Laboratory to explore the possibility of reverse-engineering the circuit and treating movement disorders outside the brain. Their studies showed the therapeutic potential for using stimulation on the surface of the wrist to interrupt the tremulous signal driving the tremor in the brain.
What difference do you think you can make in your particular sector?
Traditionally, tremor is treated with medication, which is only effective for about half of the users and can be accompanied by unpleasant side effects. If medication doesn’t work, physicians may recommend botox injections, however, this only lasts up to three months and can cause weakness in the fingers. Surgery may be the next approach, although this is the most invasive and costly option.
Cala Trio is the first of its kind - an individualised therapy for essential tremor that fits with the flow of an active life. The team is motivated by the belief that wearable neuromodulation therapies will soon transform the standard of care for patients living with many chronic diseases.
Tell us more about the technology at the centre of your product and service?
Cala Trio delivers significant tremor reduction in clinician-rated, patient-rated, and objective accelerometer measurements using the same pathways as brain implants.
The Cala Trio has electrodes on the inside of the wrist band which delivers electrical stimulation to the median and radial nerves. This desynchronises tremulous activity in the brain. This new approach of peripheral surface stimulation is thought to disrupt pathological tremor frequency signals in the central neural network and show a meaningful reduction of tremor in the patient’s treated hand. The key to our technology is the link between sensors reading physiologic signals from the body to calibrate and individualise the therapeutic electrical signals.
Physiologically calibrated stimulation and sensors facilitate remote monitoring and the digitally-connected ecosystem contributes to the development of strong, real-world evidence.
The actionable, data-driven insights enable informed clinical decision making and are tailored to the patient’s needs.
Who have you had to work with to establish your product and service?
During her Biodesign fellowship at Stanford, Kate Rosenbluth partnered with Scott Delp to study noninvasive neuromodulation therapy in the treatment of essential tremor, laying the groundwork for what would eventually become the Cala Trio. Kate and Scott raised Series A funding in 2014 to support proof-of-concept studies and early product development on peripheral stimulation. Serena Wong later joined the founding team to lead research and development. Together, the group founded Cala Health to provide non-invasive, individualised electroceuticals for essential tremor.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Cala Health provides wearable, data-driven therapies the use electricity as medicine to harness the power of the body’s nervous system, delivering individualised treatment that positively impacts the lives of those living with chronic disease. Starting with groundbreaking insights in neuroscience and incorporating rich clinical data sets we have developed a pioneering new class of wearable neuromodulation therapies, with implications way beyond essential tremor. We see this as the start of a transformation of the standard of care for chronic disease with non-invasive, neuromodulation therapy.
