Arcascope, a circadian rhythms technology company, has just raised a $2.85 million seed round to accelerate the commercial rollout of its innovative, evidence-based offering for shift workers and their employers, while expanding into new application areas.
The company, founded by 3 PhD experts in sleep science, is launching its validated circadian management platform, bolstered by clinical data showing marked improvements in sleep and fatigue.
Interest in circadian rhythms has grown rapidly in recent years, with new attention being paid to circadian disruption, as in jet lag, and the emerging field of chronomedicine, or the idea of timing drugs to maximize efficacy and minimize toxicity.
CHANTILLY, Va., Sept. 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Arcascope, a healthcare technology company solving the massive problem of circadian rhythms disruption caused by modern life, today announces the closing of a $2.85 million seed round led by Supermoon Capital, with participation from Inception Health, New Dominion Angels, AIoT Health, Inflect Health, the Accelerate Blue Fund and the Monroe Brown Seed Fund, HealthX Ventures, and other well-respected angel investors.
Light exposure at night affects our health and ability to sleep. Image shows a person working on a computer and experiencing light from a computer and an overhead light.
Shift workers' jobs put their health at risk. Image shows a nurse working at night, but unable to sleep during the day.
Screenshots from Arcascope's Shift app.
Circadian health is an often ignored dimension of sleep health. Image shows a person sleeping in a bed.
The company is launching its validated circadian management platform, currently accessible through the smartphone app, Shift, which addresses the pressing unmet needs of shift workers. Working nights causes profound disruption of the body's internal circadian clock, which has been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, and cancer. Clinical research, spearheaded by the Arcascope team, has shown that tracking this disruption in real world contexts and making personalized behavioral interventions can improve health.
"Circadian science is in a renaissance, and Arcascope is leading the way in the development of technologies to optimize our temporal health," says Daniel Forger, a Professor of Mathematics and Professor of Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan and the company's CSO.
Despite increasing evidence for light and behavioral interventions that can help shift workers improve their circadian health, few resources have existed for these workers until now. With Arcascope's sleep and circadian digital twin technology, years in development, there is finally a solution for helping shift workers to adjust their body's internal clock to fit the demands of their jobs. With this new funding, Arcascope will expand its technology to the Android market and help more enterprise customers retain staff, reduce absenteeism, and improve the health and wellbeing of their workers. Long term, the company is excited to lead development in the field of chronomedicine, enabling pharmaceutical companies, researchers, and individuals to benefit from optimizing the timing of drugs and treatments.
"Arcascope is at the forefront of the rapidly growing field of chronomedicine," said Grayson Judge, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Supermoon Capital. "The company's circadian rhythm technology offers a new class of time-optimized interventions that will extend and enhance lives."
Previously supported by more than $2 million in non-dilutive funding from the National Institutes of Health, the company is led by an award-winning team with deep technical knowledge. The CEO, Olivia Walch, is an applied mathematics PhD who previously won grand prize at two international hackathons and whose prior apps have been downloaded more than half a million times; she is also a cartoonist whose work has been featured in the Washington Post, The Nib, and the volume she co-edited on the mathematics of gerrymandering, Political Geometry. The CTO, Kevin Hannay, was the recipient of SIAM Life Sciences Early Career award for his work modeling human circadian rhythms, and the CSO, Daniel Forger, is an internationally known researcher in sleep and circadian rhythms and author of Biological Clocks, Rhythms, and Oscillations: The Theory of Biological Timekeeping from MIT Press. Arcascope recently won the Well Living Alliance's Home as a Hub for Health (H3) competition from Delos and the Mayo Clinic, in recognition of their efforts to transform the home environment into one that promotes healthy living.
About the company:
Arcascope is a circadian rhythms technology company building a clinically validated platform to help people reclaim control of their time. Leveraging signals from wearable devices, we provide personalized behavioral recommendations and environmental integrations to help shift workers adapt quickly to changing work schedules, travelers adjust faster to new time zones, and people of all backgrounds improve their long-term health and happiness. https://www.arcascope.com ([email protected])
About Supermoon Capital:
Supermoon is a venture capital firm that backs visionary entrepreneurs around the world building the future of sleep. The firm invests in innovative solutions from all sectors, applying science and technology to inform their investment process and support their portfolio companies. See portfolio companies here: https://supermooncapital.com/portfolio/
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