Optimizing Patient Health

Mensura Health was founded with the specific goal of providing clinicians with the tools to significantly improve patient management and outcomes in epilepsy via optimization of existing drug therapies. We are focused on the development of a novel diagnostic system to allow rapid and accurate determination of clinically-relevant patient blood levels of anti-seizure medications (ASMs) at the point of care.

The Medical Need

Epilepsy is the fourth most common neurological disorder in the world. There are approximately 3.5 million persons with active epilepsy in the United States, nearly all of whom are being treated with one or more anti-seizure medications (ASMs). These medications are the primary method for treating epilepsy, but many patients are not well-controlled on existing therapies, or at doses that do not cause disabling side-effects.  ASMs typically have narrow therapeutic windows, and any variance from safe and effective drug levels in patients’ blood has important consequences for seizure control as well as ASM-related side effects and morbidity. As a result, the goal of “No seizures, no side effects” still cannot be achieved by the majority of epilepsy patients in the U.S. and around the world. 

Suboptimal use of ASMs is a primary reason for inadequate seizure control in epilepsy, and results directly from inadequate methods for monitoring ASM blood levels. Neurologists and other medical professionals have long sought, but currently still lack, a rapid, accurate mechanism for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of ASM blood levels in physicians’ offices and other healthcare venues in order to determine adequecy of ASM therapy, expedite dosage modifications or treat acute medical events.

The ability to rapidly and accurately assess quantitative ASM blood levels during an office visit or at any point-of-care, using small volume blood samples, is therefore a significant unmet medical need for the millions of patients with epilepsy in the U.S. It is also a concept widely supported by physicians specializing in the treatment of epilepsy and the leading epilepsy patients’ advocacy organization. 

Our Approach / Technology Platform

Mensura Health is developing a proprietary electrochemical-based detection platform to rapidly and accurately determine clinically-relevant blood levels of ASMs at the point of care. The platform uses highly specific single-strand DNA aptamers that recognize and bind to individual ASMs to create novel ‘aptasensors’. These aptasensors form the heart of disposable, microfluidic-based cartridges that pair with a small footprint detection instrument to rapidly measure and transmit a patient’s ASM blood levels to health care providers in a variety of point of-care settings.

Our first generation POCT system is designed with the following attributes:

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Founders and Team

Charles Keough, SM

Charles Keough

Charlie is a founder and CEO of Mensura Health. He has a broad range of financial, operational and business development skills with >35 years within the life sciences industry. He has extensive experience working in and with small biopharmaceutical, diagnostic and medical informatic companies in both in-house and consulting roles. He has co-founded and worked with a number of start-up companies as both a venture capitalist and a founding management team member. His range of skills includes corporate IP strategy, marketing, licensing, and financing. He was formerly employed by the Nomura Research Institute, Ltd and JAFCO America Ventures. Charlie received his BS in Biology from Boston College and earned his SM in Management from MIT.

Founder, Chief Executive Officer

Valentin Gribkoff, PhD

Valentin Gribkoff

Valentin is a founder and Chief Technical Officer of Mensura Health. He has been instrumental in setting up academic collaborations that resulted in the creation and characterization of the initial successful aptasensor surface for a Mensura target. Valentin has >35 years of professional experience in the biotech industry, including 17 years at Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he was the head of the CNS Ion Channel Drug Discovery group. While at BMS he headed a group that first cloned and expressed  a number of important neuronal potassium channels, including BK channels and KCNQ 2-5. The group discovered modulators of these channels, including the clinically-tested BK activator BMS-204352. He was later the Vice- President of Ion Channel Biology at Scion Pharmaceuticals, CSO of Knopp Neurosciences and Head of Research at Elan Pharma. He is currently an Assoc. Professor Adjunct at Yale School of Medicine, where he maintains a research program in synaptic physiology and neurodegeneration, and a co-Founder of GlioQuell in London, UK. Valentin obtained his BS in Biology from UC, Irvine and his PhD in Physiological Psychology/Neuroscience from UC, Riverside.

Founder, Chief Technical Officer

Nancy Hsiung, PhD

Nancy Hsiung

Nancy is a founder and Chief Operating Officer of Mensura Health. She has over 40 years of experience in the management and evaluation of scientific programs in biotech and international companies such as Integrated Genetics and Toyobo Ltd. She also has worked for 10 years as a venture capitalist with GeneChem Management Fund and consulted with therapeutic and diagnostic startups in the biotechnology industry. Nancy received a BA in Chemistry from the University of PA and a PhD in Chemistry from Columbia University. She is an Executive-in-Residence in the Center for the Integration of Science and Industry at Bentley University.

Founder, Chief Operating Officer

Steven Schachter, MD

Steven Schachter

Steve is a founder and Head of the Scientific Advisory Board of Mensura Health. He is Chief Academic Officer for the Consortia for Improving Medicine with Innovation & Technology (CIMIT) and a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He is Past President of the American Epilepsy Society and has served on the Epilepsy Foundation of America Board of Directors. Steve has published over 250 articles and chapters and edited or written 40 books. He is the Clinical Editor for Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine and founding editor and editor-in-chief of the medical journals Epilepsy & Behavior and Epilepsy & Behavior Case Reports. He maintains a basic and clinical research program. Steve earned his BA in Chemistry from Case Western Reserve University and his MD from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine.

Founder, Head Scientific Advisor

Robert Smith, MBA

Robert Smith

Bob serves as an Independent Director and Chairman of the Board of Mensura Health. Bob has nearly 30 years of investment experience. From 1992-2017, he served in various roles at T. Rowe Price (1992-2016) including as Vice President of T. Rowe Price Group, Inc., Vice President and Portfolio Manager at T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., a Lead Portfolio Manager at T. Rowe Price International, Inc. and as a Vice President at T. Rowe Price Trust Company. Prior to joining T. Rowe Price, Smith served as an investment analyst with MFS Investment Management for five years. Bob was on the Epilepsy Foundation Board from 2013-2022 (Chair from 2016-20), T Rowe Price Foundation Board from 2014-2022 (Chair from 2019-22), MGM Property Board from 2018-20) and Darden Foundation Board from 2019-present. He holds a B.S. degree in finance and economics from the University of Delaware and an MBA in general management from the University of Virginia.

Independent Director, Chairman of the Board

Mindy Bishop, PhD

Mindy Bishop

Mindy is the Senior Medical Bioengineer at Mensura Health. Her research interests have been focused on biomedical sensing. She received her PhD in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from MIT and Harvard where she did her graduate work in Electrical Engineering at MIT while studying medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her PhD research helped develop integrated high-bandwidth sensing and compute architectures based on carbon nanotubes. Mindy developed the first working prototypes of these novel systems for infectious disease diagnosis at Massachusetts General Hospital, demonstrating their promise for medical applications. The success of these systems was leveraged to translate carbon nanotube field-effect transistor fabrication capabilities from academia to commercial semiconductor manufacturing. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley where she majored in both Materials Science and Bioengineering.

Senior Medical Bioengineer

Contact Us

We are located at LabShares, 

90 Bridge Street, Newton MA 02458

Reach us by email:

nancy@mensurahealth.com