gaithersburg, Md.-based Polaris Genomics, a mental healthcare firm focused on using physical biomarkers to improve mental health diagnoses and treatments, has secured $250,000 in debt, according to a recent SEC filing. According to Pitchbook, the company has raised over $5.9 million from investors.

Founded in 2017 by Yusuf Henriques, a US Army veteran, Charles Cathlin, who served in the US air Force, Princeton graduate Tshaka Cunningham, and physician Anne NaClerio, a 30-year veteran of the US Army, the startup aims to address the challenges of mental health diagnosis. Charles Cathlin drew on his experiences treating first responders of the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001.

Charles Cathlin serves as the company’s CEO, tshaka Cunningham is chief science officer, and Anne NaClerio serves as chief medical officer. Cunningham also holds the title of director of R&D.

According to Startup Health, Charles Cathlin, an engineer and graduate of the Air Force Academy and stanford University, sought to move beyond observation and self-reporting in mental health by focusing on objective measures.

“The firefighters and police officers were traumatized by what they experienced,” Charles Cathlin told Illumina, whose accelerator Polaris Genomics joined as an early-stage startup. “That had a large impact on me and got me interested in mental health, because no one was really addressing it.”

cathlin’s research led him to a psychiatric researcher in New York City who connected mental health conditions and RNS expression,offering a potential avenue for objective diagnosis.

“What got me excited was that there was an actual biomarker to identify who actually had post-traumatic stress disorder,” Charles Cathlin told Startup Health. “The fact that you can introduce an objective tool to that process was a game changer.”

Charles cathlin states that the company’s mission is to make “invisible wounds visible using the power of genomics.”

“We believe genomics is a driving force to connect mental illness to its biological underpinnings. by doing that, we can decrease the stigma, suffering, silence, and suicide.”

Polaris Genomics has partnered wiht the Illumina Accelerator, and scientists from Mount Sinai and the Max Planck Institute of psychiatry to develop a patented genomic biomarker assay to identify risks of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The company holds two patents on the blood-based biomarker model for PTSD.

Last year, the company launched a trial with Stella DC to further develop PTS-iD, a test using genomics to detect the physical changes underlying PTSD. Polaris Genomics emphasizes that the Covid-19 pandemic has “elucidated the urgency for advances in diagnostics and treatment across a range of mental health and neuropsychiatric conditions.”