Izalex Inc., an Irvine-based medical device startup, is looking to use submarine-finding technology to improve diagnoses of some brain disorders.
The company was created earlier this month as an offshoot of Thuris Corp., a privately held drug developer also based in Irvine. Thuris owns the majority of Izalex along with Numenor Ventures LLC of Santa Barbara.
“The idea of forming Izalex and spinning the NeuroGraph technology was to endow it with the resources that are required to really move this thing,” said R. Scott Greer, Izalex’s Santa Barbara-based chief executive and managing director of Numenor.
Thuris is focused on drugs to treat several conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment.
Izalex’s product is NeuroGraph, a portable computer device that lets doctors run a 20-minute collection of electrophysiological data from a patient. The Food and Drug Administration has approved NeuroGraph.
The company hopes to launch NeuroGraph within 18 to 24 months, according to Greer.
Izalex only has two workers now, including Greer. He said he was raising a first round of venture funding that would be used for several purposes, including building up a management team and funding clinical studies.
NeuroGraph grew out of research from two University of California, Irvine, professors: Gary Lynch, Thuris’ chairman and founder; and colleague Richard Granger.
Lynch and Granger, who also founded Irvine-based Cortex Pharmaceuticals Inc., developed signal-processing techniques for the Navy to classify sonar signals, or in Greer’s words, “to distinguish what’s a submarine and what’s a whale.”
Vita Reed
