Japanese digital therapeutics startup CureApp secures $51.5M in series G round

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Image credit: CureApp

Tokyo-based digital therapeutics startup CureApp announced on Tuesday that it has secured about 7 billion yen (about $51.5 million US) from global investment firm Carlyle (NASDAQ:CG) in a series G round. This follows their previous round raising 2.1 billion yen ($19.7 million) back in March of 2017. The latest round brought their funding sum up to date to 13.4 billion yen ($98.6 million) while Japanese startup database Initial estimates CureApp’s valuation has reached 41.5 billion yen ($305 million) as of May.

In conjunction with the latest funding, CureApp invites a director from Carlyle to the board. The investment firm aims to support the startup in the deployment of digital therapeutics for hypertension and the expansion of its development pipeline. Leveraging the investment firm’s expertise in the global healthcare industry, the startup expects to expand its sales and distribution network and strengthen its marketing and product development platform worldwide.

CureApp was founded in July of 2014 by two medical doctors: Kota Satake (CEO) and Susumu Suzuki (CTO). In collaboration with the Department of Respiratory Medicine at Keio University School of Medicine, they released a smoking cessation app for clinically treating nicotine dependence in February of 2015. The app has got approval as a digital therapeutics platform in August of 2020 and then to be covered by medical insurance in December of the same year.

In addition, CureApp has also developed digital therapeutics for hypertension, based on joint research with the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Jichi Medical University, received regulatory approval in April this year. For other target diseases, the startup is conducting research and development in a number of disease areas including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), alcoholism, cancer, and chronic heart failure.