CNS Response announced that it has closed a $1 million bridge loan with venture capitalist John Pappajohn. Pappajohn has been involved in over 100 startups, including Caremark and Quantum Health. Over the past two months, CNS Response has closed two bridge loans totaling $1.2 million.
The money will allow CNS Response, based in Costa Mesa, Calif., to complete an upcoming depression study. The company has completed enrollment at 14 sites for a treatment-resistant depression clinical trial. CNS Response is now on track to complete the study by September, with results to be released before the end of 2009.
CNS Response is positioning its Referenced-EEG (rEEG) system as a cost-saving, more clinically effective approach to treating depression. A 2004 study published in PharmacoEconomics found that patients with treatment-resistant depression spend almost twice as much on doctor visits and outpatient claims than regular patients. Many depression patients try one medication after another, spending money and time, in an often futile effort to find something that works. CNS Response notes that treatment failure in disorders like depression ranges from 40 to 60 percent. REEG is a system of physiologic markers used to guide physicians in the treatment of patients with mental illness. Certain biomarkers predict the probable effectiveness of specific drugs. The rEEG system analyzes these biomarkers and compares them to a clinical database to detect abnormal patient physiology, helping physicians to prescribe medications with the highest potential effectiveness.
In an earlier series of clinical trials involving patients with treatment-resistant depression, physicians helped over 75 percent of them find medications that worked. A study released last year by United BioSource, a global pharmacoeconomic research firm, indicated that the use of CNS Response’s rEEG system for treatment-resistant depression is “superior to the American Psychiatric Association treatment guidelines.”