Tal Medical Appoints Atul Pande, M.D., Former SVP and Head of Neurosciences at GSK, as Chief Medical Officer, EVP and SAB member
BOSTON, Dec. 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Tal Medical, Inc., a clinical stage medical device company focused on developing an innovative, non-invasive neurostimulation treatment for psychiatric disorders, today announced the appointment of Atul Pande, M.D., as its Chief Medical Officer, Executive Vice President and a member of its Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Pande is an industry veteran, who brings to Tal more than 25 years of experience in the fields of psychiatry and neurosciences.
"We are thrilled that Atul decided to join us and lead our clinical development efforts," said Jan Skvarka, the company's President and CEO. "This is an exciting time for us, as we are in the process of designing and launching several new clinical trials. Atul's hands-on experience in trial design, his standing in the psychiatric clinical research community, and his dedication to our cause to find a safe acute treatment for depression and bipolar disorder, will be important in our accelerating scale-up efforts."
Most recently, Dr. Pande was Senior Vice President and Senior Advisor, Pharmaceutical R&D at GlaxoSmithKline. For more than two decades, he has been active in the development of multiple important Central Nervous System drugs while holding various senior roles in Pfizer R&D, Parke-Davis/Warner-Lambert, and Lilly Research Laboratories. His experience includes drug development, registration, launch and lifecycle management in the areas of anxiety, depression, epilepsy, neuropathic pain, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Dr. Pande is a psychiatrist and fellow of several scientific societies, including the American Psychiatric Association. He began his career as a faculty member at the University of Michigan Medical School where his research focused on mood disorders. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and over 100 abstracts, book chapters, and book reviews.
"These are paradigm shifting times in neurosciences," added Dr. Pande. "While pharmaceutical companies are hitting a brick wall in their drug development efforts in psychiatry, new emerging neurostimulation-based techniques pursued by medical device companies show great promise in areas such as depression or bipolar disorder. Tal, with its innovative LFMS technology, its promising early clinical data, and a leading team of executives and advisors, clearly stands out in the field."
Dr. Pande is joining effective as of December 1.
About Tal Medical
Tal Medical, Inc. is a privately-held, clinical-stage medical device company focused on developing low-field magnetic stimulation ("LFMS") of the brain for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. LFMS is a first-in-class, non-invasive neuromodulation technology that showed a rapidly-acting effect in early human clinical trials in major depressive disorder and bipolar depression. The technology, invented at the McLean Hospital (affiliate of Harvard Medical School), has the potential to redefine the clinical practice of psychiatry, in a similar way as medical devices have done in cardiology, oncology and other clinical areas. Tal was founded in 2010 by PureTech, a science and technology research and development company, in conjunction with leading scientists in the fields of depression and neuromodulation.
Share this article