Our Goal: enhancing the plasticity and enabling the patient to recover after a stroke. One method to achieve the enhancement of plasticity is electrical stimulation of the brain. Fundamental studies already demonstrated the effectiveness of this mechanism successfully. The therapeutic success of conventional therapy is expected to be substantially improved when the plasticity is enhanced.

Consequently, patients who do not benefit from conventional rehabilitation might be able to regain functions, and patients who are responding to conventional rehabilitation might improve or accelerate the results of their therapy.

To make this dream come true, a novel medical device for plasticity enhancement needs to be developed and built. We are tackling this exact mission to bring a device to market, from which stroke patients will benefit in the future.

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Der Beitrag The Brain Interchange System for Stroke Rehabilitation erschien zuerst auf CorTec | Thinking ahead – Innovation in Neurotechnology.

An interdisciplinary team at Montpellier, including researchers from the institute INRIA, surgeons from the clinic St. Jean Orthosud, clinicians from the USSAP Rehabilitation Center and biotechnology engineers from the company NEURINNOV, have joined forces towards this end. Members of the team have been using CorTec’s unique multi-contact spiral epineural cuff electrodes for epineural stimulation for years. Using these electrodes to stimulate the medial and the radial nerves in the arm, they have already shown that functional hand movements could be elicited, including useful grip types for everyday life, such as the “key grip”, the “power grip” and the “hook grip”. This preliminary work, however, was done in anesthetized patients.

The logical next step was to attempt a similar feat in awake patients, who got the electrodes implanted for a limited period of time (28 days). In a research paper published in one of the most prestigious scientific journals (Nature), the authors now presented their successes. In two tetraplegic patients, the neurostimulation could induce functional and powerful grasping movements, which remained consistent and stable over the whole duration of implantation. What’s more, the patients learned to produce the movements themselves, using an intuitive interface controlled by residual voluntary movements of their shoulder or head. In an impressive movie, the authors show one of the subject performing meaningful actions with this setup, such as picking up food from a plate and feeding himself.

Despite this impressive success, a few drawbacks still need to be considered:

First, the patients’ hands had to be supported by splints to maintain the wrist at a functional extended position. Second, the stimulation settings and the interface had to be individually designed and adjusted for each patient. Third, and most importantly, the setup was using percutaneous cables. A fully implantable solution without any skin breach will be needed to arrive at an assistive system that is suitable for everyday life. Given the swift progress in implantable technologies, however, provided, for example, by CorTec and other companies in the sector, finding a solution for this seems only a matter of time.

Citation:

Coste CA, William L, Fonseca L, Hiairrassary A, Andreu D, Geffrier A, Teissier J, Fattal C, Guiraud D. Activating effective functional hand movements in individuals with complete tetraplegia through neural stimulation. Sci Rep. 2022 Oct 6;12(1):16189. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-19906-x. PMID: 36202865; PMCID: PMC9537317.

Picture description:

In the back from left to right: Dr. David Guiraud (INRIA research Director and NEURINNOV CSO and Dr Charles Fattal (USSAP, Bouffard Vercelli Rehabailitation Center, Perpignan) / In the front from left to right: Jérôme (first patient) and Dr. Christine Azevedo Coste (INRIA Research Director) / [not in the picture: Dr. Jacques Teissier (surgeon, St Jean Clinic, Saint Jean de Védas)]

Der Beitrag Tetraplegics use their hands again erschien zuerst auf CorTec | Thinking ahead – Innovation in Neurotechnology.

It is a vision that has been at the core of CorTec’s DNA since its inception more than 10 years ago by now: Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) that enable severely paralyzed people to communicate again – by recording brain signals with neurotechnological implants and deciphering their meaning with intelligent algorithms.

This dream is now about to finally come true – with the help of funding by the European Commission in the EIC Pathfinder program and the Swiss Secretariate for Education, Research and Innovation, amounting to almost 6 million Euro. In the project, CorTec has teamed up with European scientists that have been spearheading the BCI movement: Dr. Nick Ramsey from the University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands, who coordinates the project, and Dr. Gernot Müller-Putz from Graz University of Technology in Austria. CorTec will develop and provide the implantable hardware that will pick up the brain signals:  customized high-resolution ECoG electrodes with high-channel cabling and novel implantable connectors. The Swiss Wyss Center for Bio- and Neuroengineering will develop and provide a revolutionary implantable electronics system based on their ABILITY system that will process the data and transmit them wirelessly to external computers for analysis and decoding.

The project’s idea is to combine decoding of both speech and hand movement signals from the human sensorimotor areas to enable direct brain-controlled spelling and eventually speech. This combination is worldwide unique. It will provide patients for the first time with a complete and easy-to use communication system that will allow them to communicate and control a computer cursor. The approach is to be implemented for the first time in two patients who are “locked-in”, having lost their ability to move and speak due to a fatal disease like ALS.

For this ambitious plan, the researchers are building on extensive previous work that showed that the individual components can work:

“As a first step to enable the patients to interact with the system, we will set up the decoding for mouse clicks and cursor control from intended movements, which we have shown to be feasible in previous research”, explains Dr. Müller-Putz. In addition, Dr. Ramsey’s group is developing a way to decode language from brain signals: “We are assessing the person’s attempt to produce the phonemes that make up a spoken word. In this way, we can read out from brain signals in real time what the patient wants to say. For that purpose, it is essential to be able to pick up very fine-grained brain signals, which can only be achieved with the high-quality  high- resolution CorTec AirRay™ electrodes, in combination with the WYSS center’s innovative ABILITY system. Together, they will allow to stream the huge amount of data wirelessly to external processing units that will evaluate the brain signals in real time.”

Dr. Tracy Laabs, who is responsible for the Wyss Center’ contribution, is excited.  “After several years of prototype developments, this project will allow us to make the crucial final development steps that will bring our system to the patient”.

It is important to the researchers to come up with a solution that not only works in artificial lab environments, but also at home and without the support of technical experts. To that end, the new system needs to be easy to use and robust, while using the latest AI-based and self-learning technologies. If successful, this would be the first BCI that is ready for everyday use, making a huge practical difference for patients, caregivers and health care professionals.

“This project will be a real breakthrough in bringing Brain-Computer Interfaces to clinical practice. We at CorTec are honored and proud to be part of this endeavor”, says Dr. Martin Schüttler, CorTec’s CTO.

References:

Grant:

EU Pathfinder program: https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-funding-opportunities/calls-proposals/eic-pathfinder-challenge-tools-measure-and-stimulate-activity-brain-tissue_en

Press release by the UMC Utrecht: https://www.umcutrecht.nl/nieuws/brain-computer-interfaces-voor-verlamde-mensen?lang=en

Links to the Project Partners:

https://www.nick-ramsey.eu/

https://www.tugraz.at/institute/ine/research/team-mueller-putz/

https://wysscenter.ch/advances/ability

Der Beitrag Speak your mind! – Pilot clinical study with severely paralyzed patients erschien zuerst auf CorTec | Thinking ahead – Innovation in Neurotechnology.

The proprietary CorTec neuromodulation system “Brain Interchange” was developed for the discovery of novel neurotherapies. With funding by the US-American National Institutes of Health (NIH), and in collaboration with one of the world leaders in the field, Professor Dr. Jeff Ojemann and his team from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, USA, it is planned to develop novel treatments for stroke rehabilitation with the help of this innovative system.

Stroke is the most common neurological disorder and the second most common cause of death. About 25 % of the population above 25 years of age are expected to suffer from a stroke some time in their life (GBD 2016). Today, there are already more than 80 million stroke survivors worldwide, more than half of whom suffer from permanent disabilities that are resistant to rehabilitation – most commonly impairments in using their arms, which greatly compromise their daily lives. Neuromodulation could offer new hope for treatment to overcome these sustained disabilities.

Dr. Ojemann explains their novel approach for helping stroke patients: “Although a stroke irrevocably destroys many nerve cells, the remaining brain has amazing capacities for plastic changes – even in adults and people of advanced age. Our idea is to make use of this plasticity to re-wire the brain, such that healthy brain regions can take over motor control of the affected arm. We know from previous research that such plastic rewiring can be induced by specific electrical stimulation, synchronized with the rhythms of the brain – especially the so-called beta rhythms. Our idea is to pick up those brain rhythms through an implanted device and stimulate specific brain regions in a manner that is synchronized to the brain rhythms while patients perform a physical rehabilitation training. Using this high-precision approach, we aim to induce pinpointed changes in the brain that improve mobility in a much more effective way than motor training alone.”

CorTec has been collaborating with the Washington group for several years during which the joint project idea was refined, and the technological requirements and functions of the neuromodulation implant were discussed. The group in Seattle is currently working with a Brain Interchange Evaluation Kit for testing it as a platform for the new therapeutic approach. Now, the  joint effort has convinced the NIH to fund a 5-year research project, including a first clinical trial, with a total of over 7 Mio. USD.

Professor Jeffrey Herron, co-investigator and engineering lead on the project, explains why they chose CorTec’s system for their ambitious plans: “We selected to use the CorTec Brain Interchange system for this clinical study due to our need for a distributed research platform that can accurately respond to sensed neural activity with specifically timed stimulation to the cortex. As we continue to develop the next generation of neuromodulation therapies, I look forward to seeing the impact that the Brain Interchange will have in future studies, and, most importantly, the patients whom we seek to benefit through this work.”

The feedback from first users, the swift advancement of tests and validations as well as the discussions with the regulatory authorities in the USA (the FDA) make CorTec very confident that the system will be able to meet the technical requirements for the novel therapy idea and will receive timely regulatory approval for human use in this first clinical trial.

Dr. Joern Rickert, CorTec’s Founder and Chief Scientific Officer explains why this project is extremely promising for CorTec: “Stroke rehabilitation by neuromodulation has demonstrated first successes in clinical trials already (see, for example, Coscia et al., 2019, Northstar trial). With this project, we build on the learnings from these pioneering trials and attempt a refined treatment with increased success chances in first patients.

We are extremely honored to work with Profs Dr. Jeff Ojemann, Dr. Jeffrey Herron and Dr. Steven Cramer (UCLA) and their teams comprising neurological, neurosurgical as well as strong technical skills. They are worldwide experts in the use of ECoG, cortical stimulation and in the development of new strategies for stroke rehabilitation.“

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Disclaimer:

The research reported in this publication is supported by the National Institute Of Neurological Disorders And Stroke of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number UH3NS121565. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

References:

Grant: NIH Project 1UH3NS121565-01A1: ” Motor Recovery through Plasticity-Inducing Cortical Stimulation”, in response to RFA-NS-18-023: https://reporter.nih.gov/search/-xvTvG85Ukm-KXyunAWaJw/project-details/10357993

GBD 2016 Lifetime Risk of Stroke Collaborators
Global, regional, and country-specific lifetime risks of stroke, 1990 and 2016. N Engl J Med. 2018; 379: 2429-2437

Northstar trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/record/NCT00170716?term=northstar&draw=2&rank=5

Coscia M, Wessel MJ, Chaudary U, Millán JDR, Micera S, Guggisberg A, Vuadens P, Donoghue J, Birbaumer N, Hummel FC. Neurotechnology-aided interventions for upper limb motor rehabilitation in severe chronic stroke. Brain. 2019 Aug 1;142(8):2182-2197. doi: 10.1093/brain/awz181. PMID: 31257411; PMCID: PMC6658861.

Der Beitrag CorTec’ Brain Interchange implant system on track for first-in-man study, funded by the NIH erschien zuerst auf CorTec | Thinking ahead – Innovation in Neurotechnology.

To work towards this ambitious goal, Dutch research centers with long-standing expertise in the neurosciences have partnered up with medical centers, patient organizations and technology companies, not only from the Netherlands, but also from several other countries as well.

CorTec works on the subproject lead by Dr. Nick Ramsey at the University Medical Center Utrecht on paralysis and motor impairment. Specifically, CorTec will provide customized high-density electrodes along with the Brain Interchange Implant system for a pilot clinical study with a paralyzed patient for recovery of speech.

“We are very excited to collaborate on this ambitious project and bring our Brain Interchange system to a new clinical application with a high unmet clinical need”, says Dr. Jörn Rickert, CorTec’s Chief Strategic & Scientific Officer.

Gain more insights about the Intense Project on their official website: https://intenseproject.eu

You might also enjoy the interview with Nick Ramsey for our latest video project. Check out the playlist for the single interview as well as our video here.

Der Beitrag INTENSE: Dutch neurotechnology network on brain-machine interfaces erschien zuerst auf CorTec | Thinking ahead – Innovation in Neurotechnology.

As a celebration in person is still not possible, the Bernstein Center will host a Special Seminar, in which Jeanine Laturner will present her work.
In this short clip we prepared a sneak peak for you. If you would like to join us in this Speacial Seminar, please reach out to Fiona Siegfried to request your personal zoom invite for the event.

Learn more about the Bernstein Center and the Special Seminar.

Check out all CorTec News and Events.

Der Beitrag Bernstein-CorTec Award & the Bernstein Special Seminar erschien zuerst auf CorTec | Thinking ahead – Innovation in Neurotechnology.

A special promise of optoelectronic solutions is based on the fact that they can use light conductors instead of metallic cables for energy transmission. Metallic cabling poses a risk in conventional active medical implants, as it can interfere with modern imaging technologies that are essential for many diagnostic purposes. Therefore, getting rid of the cabling would increase the diagnostic options that a patient can use, which, in turn, would make neuromodulation implants more attractive and would contribute to patient safety. Synergia Medical aims to exploit those advantages by developing a first optoelectronic implant for neuromodulation.

“Synergia Medical works with several neurosurgeons specialized on the placement of neurostimulators for vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). Their feedback concerning the electrode of Synergia Medical is unanimous: The design is user-friendly and they like it. Indeed, they can wrap the electrode around the vagus nerve in less than 25 seconds, which is very fast. In addition to this user-friendly aspect that facilitates the surgery, the electrode’s self-sizing capacities are also a positive feature that is very important“, highlights Pascal Doguet, CTO & COO of Synergia Medical.

CorTec is proud to contribute to this endeavor by developing a special, custom-made cuff electrode type. Ronny Pfeifer, the responsible cuff specialist engineer at CorTec, explains: “For this project, we extended an existing technology for manufacturing spiral cuffs and combined it with our proprietary laser technology. In several steps, we built a structure that will always relax back to a spiral shape after unfolding. This allows the electrodes to “automatically” wrap themselves around any thin object, which makes them very easy to implant. The silicon wrapping is long enough to allow for several turns around the nerve axis. This yields a particularly tight and robust mechanical and electrical seal”. Because of that special design, the cuffs can flexibly adapt to a relatively wide range of nerve thicknesses, without interrupting the intraneural blood flow, making them particularly versatile in use. “In close cooperation with our partner Synergia Medical, we have inserted and refined a number of patented additional features along the developmental process that optimize practical use further. For instance, we included tapered edges that create a soft lateral closure and particular good alignment to bent nerve structures, a handling flap that simplifies implantation and special design features in the metal conducting elements that are extra resistant to stretch.” adds Pfeifer.

„Working with the experienced team of Synergia on their truly innovative product has been both fruitful and a great pleasure. We are proud to continue our collaboration and help to bring their innovation to patients as soon as possible”, states Jörn Rickert (CEO of CorTec).

The first application that Synergia Medical is targeting with their novel devices will be epilepsy. It is the fourth most common neurological disorder and particularly distressing. Epileptic seizures, often accompanied by weird, uncontrollable movements, can hit the patients anytime, anywhere. In about a third of all patients, pharmacological treatment remains ineffective, creating a desperate need for new treatment options.

Neurostimulation could provide a powerful new solution for that. Various researchers are already experimenting with stimulation of the vagus nerve – which is part of the relaxing parasympathetic system – to calm down the overactive brain when an epileptic seizure is imminent. Apart from the special CorTec electrodes that will wrap around the vagus nerve, the Synergia system will employ a number of technological advances to create a novel closed-loop optoelectronic implant:

“We integrated optoelectronics into the implantable device as a means of power & communication transfer and biomarker sensing. We replaced all metal wires by optical fibers, rendering the device fully compliant with magnetic resonance imaging and brain scans. Furthermore, we integrated a battery that is rechargeable in less than 10 min and requires replacement only every 15 years. Beyond that, we will provide new tools to enable the physician to adjust the stimulation for each patient and to better understand its effect on the treatment“, explains Pascal Doguet, CTO & COO of Synergia Medical. “Besides, the relation with CorTec has been excellent since the very beginning of our collaboration. CorTec’s high knowledge and quality has been instrumental in the successful development of our dedicated cuff electrodes.“ At the moment, the ambitious novel device is still under development and not available for human use yet. But if the system will indeed prove to be able to successfully intercept seizures, that will constitute a major breakthrough for treatment-resistant epilepsy. Learn more about Synergia Medical.

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References:

https://www.synergia-medical.com/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330619476_Minimal-Traumatic_Peripheral_Nerve_Cuff_Electrodes

Der Beitrag Seeing the light for treatment-resistant epilepsy erschien zuerst auf CorTec | Thinking ahead – Innovation in Neurotechnology.

Claus brings over 20 years of med-tech industry experience at multinational med-tech leaders like Stryker, Medtronic, Sorin CRM, as well as stints with an EU Notified Body and several med-tech start-ups.

“I am excited to join CorTec in this new role as we look to enable novel neurostimulation therapies, and in particular develop the Brain Interchange Platform technology, which promises to enable treatment of underserved patients with diverse neurological and neurodegenerative pathologies, such as Parkinson’s Disease, epilepsy, and stroke rehabilitation”, says Claus Freyinger.

His experience includes functional leadership in the areas of regulatory affairs, quality assurance, and market access & reimbursement, with a focus on high risk, implantable products in the neurovascular and cardiovascular sectors.

Areas of demonstrated success for Claus include leading global teams, strategic and tactical initiatives including time-to-market acceleration, and regulatory advocacy & clinical affairs activities globally. His educational background includes degrees from Boston College, executive education from Kellogg School of Management (Chicago), and a Certificat d’Etudes Politiques from “Sciences Po” (Strasbourg, France).

We are happy to welcome Claus as a new member of the CorTec team and we are looking forward to further expansion and an exciting future together.

Learn more about our Management team as well as our advisory boards.

You would like to gain more insights about our daily working life at CorTec or would like to become part of our team?

Visit our Careers Page!

Der Beitrag New Member of the Management Team at CorTec erschien zuerst auf CorTec | Thinking ahead – Innovation in Neurotechnology.

The award is given in recognition of outstanding achievements at the University of Freiburg and was most recently awarded for no less than two outstanding doctoral theses by Dr. Julia Gallinaro and Dr. Katharina Heining.

This year, the award will be given to master’s theses in the field of neurotechnology and computational neuroscience.

Nominations for the award can be sent by June 30 via email to Ms. Fiona Siegfried.

More Information about the nomination procedure here.

More details about the Bernstein-CorTec Award here.

Also take a look at last years awardees and the short video introduction they prepared here.

Der Beitrag Call for Nominations – the Bernstein-CorTec Award 2021 erschien zuerst auf CorTec | Thinking ahead – Innovation in Neurotechnology.

Today we would like to introduce the Moore4Medical* project to you. It is the overarching objective of Moore4Medical to accelerate innovation in electronic medical devices.

The project addresses emerging medical applications and technologies that offer significant new opportunities for the Electronic Systems & Components (ECS) industry including: bioelectronic medicines, organ-on-chip, drug adherence monitoring, smart ultrasound, radiation free interventions and continuous monitoring. The new technologies will help fighting the increasing cost of healthcare by reducing the need for hospitalization, helping to develop personalized therapies, and realizing intelligent point-of-care diagnostic tools.

In this video Vera Oppelt gives a short introduction to our work in this project. She is leading and monitoring the project on CorTec’s side. She explains first hand, what our role – and more specifically – our goal is in the Moore4Medical project together with 66 selected companies, universities and institutes from 12 countries who develop open technology platforms for these emerging fields.

Discover more interesting projects we are working on with international partners here.

Make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and don’t miss out on updates.

* Moore4Medical receives funding within the Electronic Components and Systems for European Leadership Joint Undertaking (ECSEL JU) in collaboration with the European Union’s H2020 Framework Programme (H2020/2014-2020) and National Authorities, under grant agreement H2020-ECSEL-2019-IA-876190

Music from www.frametraxx.de

Der Beitrag CorTec introduces Moore4Medical erschien zuerst auf CorTec | Thinking ahead – Innovation in Neurotechnology.