Brainsway

Early years

Transcranial magnetic stimulation technology, invented during the 1980s as a diagnostic tool, operates by sending an electric current through a coil, whereby an intense magnetic field is generated. When encompassing the brain, the field penetrates the cranium and stimulates nerve cells in a particular area of the brain. During the 1990s, Israeli scientists began speculating as to the potential psychiatric applications of TMS after accounts emerged of patients reporting mood improvement following exposure to TMS.

Early TMS devices, employing circular and figure-8 coils, were limited by the extent to which they could penetrate beyond the cerebral cortex: elevating the intensity of the magnetic field increased the depth of penetration but brought with it a higher risk of negative side effects, such as pain. Mark S. George of the Medical University of South Carolina likened the search for a device that could stimulate the deeper regions of the brain and still be safe for use to the quest for the Holy Grail.

H-coil technology

In the late 1990s, Avraham Zangen, an Israeli scientist and Bar-Ilan University alumnus, was performing postdoctoral research on the brain's reward system at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The H-coil was patented by the NIH in 2002, and the procedure whereby the H-coil was applied to TMS became known as Deep TMS.

Corporate history

Brainsway was founded in 2003 by Uzi Sofer and Avner Hagai, together with David Zacut. The research serving as the company's technological platform is the H-coil Deep TMS system patented through the U.S. National Institutes of Health in 2002. The patent is exclusively licensed to Brainsway.

Brainsway conducted its first clinical Deep TMS trials at Tel Aviv University in 2005. In January 2013, Brainsway received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and from Health Canada to market its Deep TMS device in the United States and in Canada as a treatment for depression in cases where people failed to make a recovery following drug treatment. Evidence to support this use is tentative as of 2013 no high quality evidence is available.

In early 2007 Brainsway executed an initial public offering on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, raising ₪33 million for a market cap of ₪110 million. During the year 2010 Brainsway announced plans to list shares of the company's stock on the Nasdaq exchange. In May 2011 the company disclosed the terms of its planned IPO. In June it withdrew its IPO proposal. After winning US FDA approval for its Deep TMS device in early 2013 Brainsway's market cap surpassed ₪500 million, and in early February its market cap climbed to ₪900 million.