CereMediTech Completes Tens of Millions of Yuan in Series A Funding to Advance Intelligent Diagnosis and Treatment Infrastructure for Neurological Diseases | BlueRun Ventures
Intelligent Technology Solutions for Full-Spectrum Neurological Diseases
SynBrain (中科睿医) recently completed a Series A financing round worth tens of millions of RMB, led by Lotus Venture Capital (荷塘创投) with Guotai Venture Capital (国泰创投) participating. The funds will be used primarily for product R&D, clinical trials, product registration, and market promotion.
Since June 2021, SynBrain has raised three funding rounds. BlueRun Ventures led the company's Pre-A round.
SynBrain is an innovative medical technology growth enterprise spun out from research achievements of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Software. Building on neuroscience frontiers that won China's State Scientific and Technological Progress Award, the company brings together industry-academia-research integration and medical-engineering cross-disciplinary capabilities to provide intelligent technology solutions covering screening, diagnosis, treatment, and research for neurological diseases across all scenarios.
01
From Subjective Judgment to Objective Quantification
A New Standard for Neurological Function Assessment
As China's population ages, the number of patients with neurological diseases — including stroke, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease — will continue to grow.
Currently, China has approximately 10 million Alzheimer's patients, a figure projected to exceed 40 million by 2050. Parkinson's patients already number over 3 million, with estimates reaching 5 million by 2030.
Yet this massive patient population and enormous disease burden stands in stark contrast to the significant challenges that early warning, diagnosis, and treatment of neurological diseases still pose for clinicians.
In other disease areas, doctors routinely diagnose based on physiological data — for instance, counting red blood cells and measuring hemoglobin concentration to diagnose anemia. But the unique nature of the nervous system makes describing neurological function inherently complex and difficult, and achieving precise early warning, diagnosis, and intervention for neurological diseases is especially challenging.
The traditional neurological examination, which neurologists have widely used for over a century, relies on taking medical histories, visual observation, and semi-quantitative scales. Doctors qualitatively assess core neurological functions — motor, cognitive, sensory — based on their own experience to diagnose diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. This approach depends heavily on individual physician judgment, resulting in strong subjectivity, poor consistency, and high rates of missed diagnosis.
Meanwhile, uneven distribution of medical resources in China means grassroots neurologists often lack sufficient diagnostic and therapeutic experience, leading to high rates of missed and misdiagnosed neurological conditions. Additionally, neurological diseases — particularly neurodegenerative disorders — tend to have insidious onsets and long courses. Many family members mistake symptoms for normal aging ("getting senile in old age"), causing patients to miss the optimal window for diagnosis and treatment. By the time doctors intervene, patients are often already in mid-to-late disease stages.
To address this challenge, the CAS Institute of Software and top-tier tertiary hospitals including Peking Union Medical College Hospital began deep collaborative research ten years ago. Supported by a series of national major projects — including the 12th Five-Year National 863 Program and the 13th Five-Year National Key R&D Program — they deeply integrated intelligent human-computer interaction technology with clinical diagnostic and therapeutic methods to build a multimodal intelligent assisted diagnosis system for neurological diseases. This system compensates for deficiencies in traditional neurological function assessment methods, providing doctors with quantitative, standardized, and traceable neurological function evaluation and analysis. The project was selected for the National Health Commission's "Top 30 Best Cases of AI Application in Healthcare," featured as a representative achievement of the National Key R&D Program at the National "13th Five-Year" Science and Technology Innovation Exhibition, and its invention team received the Second Prize of the 2018 State Scientific and Technological Progress Award and the First Prize of the 2015 Beijing Science and Technology Award.
As these research achievements emerged, SynBrain was founded in 2020 to carry out technology transfer and drive comprehensive clinical application. Centered on multimodal quantitative evaluation of neurological function and brain function intervention and remodeling, SynBrain has established four major product R&D and commercialization platforms covering more than ten product pipelines for specific needs and scenarios. These solutions will serve as infrastructure for neurology departments at hospitals at all levels, assisting doctors in more objectively assessing, screening, diagnosing, and treating patients with neurological diseases.
SynBrain, in collaboration with 13 top Chinese neurological hospitals including Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Sichuan University West China Hospital, and Central South University Xiangya Hospital, has completed patient enrollment for a multicenter clinical trial: "Study on Normal Value Ranges of Quantitative Parameters for Motor and Cognitive Function in Chinese Populations" (i.e., construction of a national normative population data model). The establishment of normal value ranges for quantitative parameters of motor and cognitive function — two core neurological functions — marks a first in China's neuroscience field. This will not only drive methodological breakthroughs in clinical neurological function assessment, but will also enable standardized diagnostic and functional evaluation tools for neurological diseases comparable to blood tests and ECGs.
Beyond patient populations, SynBrain's products can also be used for screening and early warning, covering broader populations. Through objective assessment, screening, and diagnosis, SynBrain will help patients detect diseases earlier and receive earlier treatment, simultaneously delivering social value in saving lives and economic value with even broader prospects.
02
Products Successively Approved for Market
Securing Strategic Position to Solidify the Full "Industry-Academia-Research-Application" Chain
To date, SynBrain has established two major systems: brain function evaluation and disease diagnosis, and digital therapeutics for neurological diseases. Among these, the motor function quantitative evaluation system received national medical device registration in early 2023. It is the first non-wearable, non-interfering medical-grade software-hardware product in China for objective quantitative motor function assessment of the human body.
The product uses ultra-high-resolution depth vision sensors, cutting-edge motion capture technology, and intelligent algorithms to quantitatively evaluate motor function parameters, assessing gait, balance, coordination, and joint range of motion — thereby helping doctors accurately and objectively diagnose diseases and track disease progression, solving the problem of inconsistent subjective evaluation standards in neurological diagnosis and treatment.
The device has a small footprint, simple operation, and is ready to use upon startup. Examinees need not go through cumbersome processes like wearing motion sensor equipment or calibration. Compared to traditional gait function examinations, the system completes an exam in 5 minutes and generates a report in 1 minute, processing over ten patients per hour — significantly improving clinical examination efficiency.
Beyond medical institutions, the motor function quantitative evaluation system can also be used in physical examination, rehabilitation, and elderly care facilities. Additionally, the system can quantitatively assess human motor function before and after drug administration, enabling objective evaluation of drug efficacy and accelerating new drug development and approval.
Furthermore, multiple products developed by SynBrain — including a cognitive function assessment and training system, an eye movement detection system, and a virtual reality neurological function rehabilitation training system — are currently in the registration application stage and expected to receive approval for market launch this year.
The ability to advance multiple product lines so efficiently stems from SynBrain's integrated industry-academia-research medical-engineering cross-disciplinary R&D capabilities. Building on over a decade of research by the CAS Institute of Software team, SynBrain co-founded the "Neuroscience Joint Innovation Center" with Peking Union Medical College Hospital, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Beijing Society for Preventing and Treating Cerebrovascular Diseases, and partnered with top domestic centers and dozens of leading experts to conduct in-depth collaboration across subspecialties including cerebrovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and cerebral small vessel disease — driving a complete closed loop from clinical application needs to industrial implementation.
SynBrain's participation in a major project under the National Science and Technology Innovation 2030 — "New Generation Artificial Intelligence" initiative — "Key Technologies for Intelligent Human-Computer Interaction for Early Warning of Neurological Diseases" — was recently approved. The project is led by Tian Feng, SynBrain's Chief Scientist and a researcher at the CAS Institute of Software. The project team comprises 10 domestic units with outstanding advantages in key technology research and application demonstration in this field, working across 6 national key/engineering laboratories and 4 top medical research platforms. These include leading domestic teams in human-computer interaction and AI from the CAS Institute of Software, Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University, and University of Science and Technology Beijing, as well as top neurological research and clinical application teams from Peking Union Medical College Hospital (ranked #1 in neurology), Beijing Tiantan Hospital (ranked #1 in neurology science and technology metrics), Sichuan University West China Hospital, and the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. SynBrain is the only corporate participant, responsible for technology transfer and application implementation.
Dr. Fan Xiangmin, CEO of SynBrain, stated: "We are honored to have gained the favor and support of first-tier investment institutions. With the successful completion of our Series A financing, the approval of our medical device registration, and the launch of national major projects, the company will fully leverage resources across research, clinical practice, market, and capital to accelerate industrialization — enabling more neuroscience innovations to reach the ground quickly and serve more doctors and patients."
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Currently, BlueRun Ventures manages multiple USD and RMB dual-currency funds in China, with assets under management exceeding RMB 15 billion — making it one of the largest early-stage funds domestically. The firm invests primarily at Pre-A and Series A stages across hard tech and innovative interaction, enterprise technology, new consumer, and healthcare sectors. It has invested in over 150 startups, including Li Auto, Waterdrop, QingCloud, Guazi.com, Qudian, Songguo Mobility, Ganji.com, Energy Monster, Yuntu Semiconductor, Machenike, Yunsheng Intelligence, Anxin Netshield, and BioMap.
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