Like countless companies in the Boston area, Akili is in the midst of the long, drawn-out and a little nerve-wracking process of submitting its lead product to the FDA for approval.
But unlike the challenges facing other pharma giants and biotech startups, Akili’s product is not a pill, an injection, a salve or a balm. Instead, Akili is asking the FDA to approve a video game.
“We wanted to take the best of what digital can offer in terms of digital engagement and excitement, but use that to deliver true medicine, meaning things that can not only help people but really treat disease,” said Eddie Martucci, co-founder and chief executive of Akili. “They’re not delivered in a pill, they’re delivered in a video game.”
Patients play tablet games that, for all appearances, are typical games. But each one is designed to challenge the player in ways that are therapeutic. Akili’s most advanced product, called Project Evo, is a treatment for adolescent ADHD.
”We’re forcing that cognitive control center in your brain into overdrive,” Martucci said. “Slowly over time, it allows you to get better at processing that information.”
Instead of making a game and throwing it out into the App Store ether, Akili is putting its games through the clinical trial ringer, with the goal of having a product physicians can write prescriptions for.
That ADHD game has already been submitted to the FDA after a Phase III clinical trial last year found children showed cognitive improvement after a month of playing Akili’s game.
“Not only do you get cognitive and symptom improvements … after a month of treatment, the front part of their brain activates much more strongly than it would beforehand,” Martucci said. “We do think we’re targeting more deeply at the functional level.”
The ADHD game is targeted toward kids between 8 and 12 years old, and has users take control of a cartoon character that must navigate through obstacles and collect the right kind of items while on a flying platform.
Because of the product Akili is trying to create, the company has to combine a drug company’s singular focus on effectiveness with a video game company’s attention to game mechanics and player interest.
“We’ve invested in both of those parts equally,” Martucci said. “Unless people deeply want to use this, the medicine also won’t work. If it’s just sitting on the shelf it won’t help you.”
Martucci said the company hopes to launch the game next year.
The company is also developing games aimed at helping patients on the autism spectrum, those who are depressed and those with multiple sclerosis.
Last month, Akili said it has raised $55 million in investor funding, including from the venture capital arms of drug giants Merck and Amgen. Akili has raised more than $100 million in total.