Researchers have moved closer to using brain implants to safely treat depression. Surgeons in Houston report that they can use electrodes to stimulate brains without touching their surface, a significant medical development. Bloomberg News reports:
Earlier this year, doctors temporarily implanted a pea-sized device made by a startup called Motif Neurotech Inc. under the skull of a man in his 30s and used it to stimulate his brain. The surgery, performed at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston, was the second in a human skull conducted by the Motif team.
The researchers are raising money from investors, in hopes of one day selling their device, which would require FDA approval and years of tests prior to approval:
Motif is currently targeting a $15 million funding round, and is part of a group of startups like including Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp. that are trying to use a new generation of surgically implanted electrodes to treat a range of ailments from Parkinson’s to paralysis. The technology has been around for a while, but has recently seen an influx of investment and entrepreneurial activity.
Others startups include Inner Cosmos Inc., Paradromics Inc., Precision Neuroscience Corp., Synchron Inc. and Blackrock Microsystems Inc.’s Blackrock Neurotech. Neuralink is the leader when it comes to funds raised, with more than $600 million to date, but has not yet said it successfully implanted a device in a human head.
“These started out as wild ideas,” said Motif Chief Executive Officer Jacob Robinson. “Now we’re beginning to see data coming out in humans. That means the field as a whole is starting to see the results we all dreamed about.”
Synchron, Precision Neuroscience and Inner Cosmos are among those that have successfully implanted their devices in humans. However, the startups’ technologies are still a long way from being commercially released. Hurdles to creating such implants are high, and the regulatory approval process is likely to be long. Motif says that its product is still years away from being widely available.
The startup hopes to launch its feasibility studies — roughly similar to Phase I clinical trials for a drug — in 2025.
As companies like Motif race to develop brain implants, they are also pushing to make their devices as small as possible. Motif’s implant is relatively tiny, roughly the width of a pea, Robinson said. The company has devised a miniaturized power system based on magnetoelectricity, eliminating the need for a battery and creating more room for electronics. Patients can charge the device by wearing a special cap for about 20 minutes a day.
Motif’s device goes into a tiny hole drilled in the skull, allowing it to sit in the skull just above the dura, a thin protective membrane on top of the brain tissue. The risks associated with surgery of the skull, as opposed to piercing the brain itself, are considerably lower, the company says.
Other startups, including Neuralink, plan to insert their electrodes deeper into the brain, which they say will more accurately target individual neurons. Advocates of the less-invasive approach believe that targeting individual neurons is too granular, with the overall picture from multiple neurons being more important. A third brain-electrode contingent believes the best approach is no surgery at all, creating devices such as electrode-studded helmets or bands….
Motif’s two in-human procedures took place while the patients were undergoing separate surgeries to remove brain tumors. Surgeons installed Motif’s devices for a few minutes and used them to stimulate the motor cortex as a proxy for stimulating the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the eventual target. Motif’s ultimate plan is for the device to stay in patient skulls for years. It has also undergone testing in pigs.
The device will target treatment-resistant depression, which affects millions of people in the US. Although the mechanism is different, the treatment area is similar to another type of already available treatment, transcranial magnetic stimulation, which delivers magnetic energy to specific parts of the brain via a coil placed on the head. However, that procedure is cumbersome because it requires daily visits to a clinic for four to six weeks, repeated once a year or more.
Medicine is advancing in other ways as well. A new ultrasound therapy could help treat cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Even if brain implants prevent depression, they will have to undergo lengthy tests before they are approved by the government. FDA employees sometimes take many years to approve life-saving drugs and medical devices.The FDA didn’t approve a home test for HIV until 24 years after it first received an application. An FDA advisory committee noted that the test held “the potential to prevent the transmission of more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of use alone.” That means thousands of people got infected with AIDS as a result of the delay in approving it. As Fortune noted, the FDA’s delay in approving the home HIV test was a “scandal.”
Technological advances are saving lives. Doctors recently did the first robotic liver transplant in America. Robots can fit in small spaces in people’s bodies that a surgeon can’t reach without cutting through living tissue, or doing other collateral damage. Doctors recently used a robot to carry out incredibly complex spinal surgery.
Medicine is advancing in other ways as well. A woman who was previously unable to have children recently received her sister’s womb in the first womb transplant in England. Artificial intelligence is now developing highly-effective antibodies to fight disease. Doctors overseas are using artificial intelligence to detect cases of breast cancer more effectively.
Scientists recently developed a treatment for alcoholism that reduces drinking by 90% among lab monkeys.
