An Evanston startup that's creating a wearable skin patch that helps sufferers of hydrocephalus raised more funding as it prepares to launch its product in 2022.
Rhaeos has raised $2.2 million in a seed round from Creative Ventures, Portal Innovations, Lateral Capital, Cedars-Sinai Accelerator, Kyto Life Science and Technology, Band of Angels, Northwestern University's NXT Fund, University of Michigan Social Venture Fund and others.
The company has raised more than $8 million in total funding since it was founded in 2018.
The startup is led by John Rogers, one of Chicago's best-known inventors. A professor of engineering at Northwestern University and the director of the school's Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics, Rogers is a former MacArthur “Genius Grant" recipient and earlier this year received the 2021 Order of Lincoln, the state of Illinois’ highest honor for professional achievement.
Rhaeos is also led by Anna Lisa Somera, the startup's CEO who's an experienced life sciences startup leader. She's helped start, invest in, and consult with biotech startups over nearly 20 years.
Somera and Rogers started Rhaeos to create a non-invasive wearable sensor that targets hydrocephalus, a life-threatening neurological condition that causes a buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain.
Its device, called the FlowSense, is about the size of a Band-Aid and goes on a person's skin, rather than surgically implanted, and monitors a person's cerebrospinal fluid. Data is then sent to the startup's app so patients can monitor their condition at home as well as the hospital.
The startup recently received $4 million in grant funding from the NIH and completed the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator program. The FlowSense is expected to launch commercially next year.
