RetiSpec’s AI-Driven Eye Test Detects Alzheimer’s Early
Eliav Shaked’s passion to solve critical challenges in Alzheimer’s led him to new research connecting brain health to retinal imaging. His company has now raised a Series A from strategic investors Topcon Healthcare and Lilly.
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The Challenge
For many years, the early detection and diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease felt pointless. Why inform someone that they were at risk of the disease, or already showing signs of decline, if there was nothing you could do for them?
That reality has shifted dramatically in the last decade. There are now multiple FDA-approved disease-modifying therapies on the market that can slow the disease and extend quality years of life. As a result, more and more people want to understand their current brain health – and what’s in store for them in the future – yet health systems have been slow to address the demand.
Current methods for the detection of Alzheimer’s are extremely limited. In fact, if a person goes to their primary care doctor (their most likely first stop) with complaints of potential mild cognitive impairment, they’ll probably just be told to watch and wait: ‘Come back next year and we’ll see how you’re doing.’
Other methods for diagnosis are invasive, expensive, and stigmatizing. For instance, people who are fearful of getting evaluated for Alzheimer’s disease are likely to avoid discussing their concerns about their brain health with their doctor. For the few people who live close enough to a large urban area to get a lumbar puncture for suspected Alzheimer’s – an extremely helpful diagnostic tool – there’s still a hesitance because it’s painful and challenging to coordinate.
What if early Alzheimer’s detection was easy, painless, and could be performed at a primary care office or at an annual eye exam?
Enter RetiSpec.
Origin Story
Eliav Shaked has always been a problem solver. He began his career as a biomedical engineer and focused on the intersection of technology and medicine. He worked for a few years at startups focused on noninvasive monitoring, mainly for vital signs of the brain, and then it was time to carve his own entrepreneurial path. In 2015 he took part in Singularity University.
“The goal for the program was to build companies that would impact a billion people in the next decade,” says Shaked. The experience lit a fire, but he wasn’t sure what problem to solve.
Around this time, a family friend was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. There was nothing Shaked could do, in spite of his knowledge of healthcare and technology, and the pain and frustration of that fact hit him hard.
He threw himself into Alzheimer’s. He discovered new research that was coming out of the University of Minnesota about how the eye could be a window into early Alzheimer’s detection. He studied spectral imaging and sharpened a theory for how it could be leveraged in new ways to detect this disease.
But all of that was an easy warmup compared to what came next. Shaked applied to and was accepted into MassChallenge in Boston. He and his wife had to sell most of their belongings, cash out their savings, pack their life into a suitcase, and live out of an AirBnB for five months.
“The goal in Boston was to ask the right questions to the right people. There was a lot of mentorship involved. I made a lot of mistakes, but it empowered me to keep on going,” says Shaked.
He not only succeeded in the program, but emerged with a company and device that could help millions of people. He also landed some of the most revered healthcare brands in Boston as interested partners.
Under the Hood
RetiSpec has created a completely non-invasive process that uses eye imaging to detect Alzheimer’s disease. They leverage already existing equipment – the fundus camera that can be found in any eye doctor's office – and take a picture of the retina at the back of your eye.
The magic of RetiSpec is in understanding that the retina is neural tissue. It’s the one point in the body where you can non-invasively see – or at least get a great proxy for – what's happening in the brain.
A fundus camera, like any standard digital camera, captures three wavelengths of color: red, green, and blue. RetiSpec takes that standard sensor off of the fundus camera and replaces it with a hyperspectral sensor that can capture and analyze 100 wavelengths of color. Then they use deep learning models to process that information, which allows them to identify signs that correlate with Alzheimer's disease.
Our Take
There are a lot of reasons we’re excited to welcome RetiSpec into StartUp Health’s Alzheimer’s Moonshot. First, we love that they’re already attracting the kinds of partners they’ll need in order to get to market and scale. RetiSpec just closed their Series A with participation from Topcon Healthcare, the leading player in the eye care space, and Eli Lilly and Company, a leader in advancing research of therapies and diagnostics for people with Alzheimer’s disease. This raise is about a lot more than money – it’s about having the right people on the bus in order to grow quickly.
We’re bullish on RetiSpec because their clinical results have been promising. They’re showing strong performance for prediction of Alzheimer’s pathology, compared with the gold standard of PET, cerebral spinal fluid, and emerging blood tests. They continue to conduct clinical trials, which are aided by the fact that participants can be recruited easily at any eye care office.
And finally, we love RetiSpec simply because it makes Alzheimer’s testing easy and accessible. Once in the market, the RetiSpec test can be made available in any primary care or eye care office, in any community regardless of income level. Given today’s demographic demands and the challenges faced by overburdened hospitals, that accessibility piece is more critical than ever.
Join us in welcoming Eliav Shaked and the RetiSpec team to StartUp Health’s Alzheimer’s Moonshot.
Connect with RetiSpec via email
Call for Alzheimer’s Innovation
With support from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) and Gates Ventures, we’ve launched a new global initiative created to develop a collaborative innovation community alongside leading companies, research teams, and stakeholders with a mission to accelerate progress in prevention, diagnosis, and management of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Learn more and apply for an Alzheimer’s Moonshot Fellowship.
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Published: Jul 18, 2024