Professor David Paterson and colleagues begin Neurobionics project as part of Aria-Funded research

NeuroBionics, a neurotechnology company developing minimally invasive implantable devices for neuromodulation therapy, has announced it has received a £4.6M grant from the UK’s Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA). The award is part of ARIA’s £50M Massively Scalable Neurotechnologies programme, which is funding radically new ways to deliver responsive neurotechnologies to the brain without brain surgery.

Merton Fellow, Professor David Paterson and Neurosurgeon Alex Green (NDCN) head up the Oxford contingent of a research group which will investigate ‘Unlocking Minimally Invasive Deep Brain Stimulation with Endovascular Neuromodulation Technology’.

The team is developing microscopic electrical fibres that can stimulate deep brain regions from inside veins. This eliminates the need to drill through the skull to place electrodes directly into brain tissue to deliver effective neuromodulation therapy.

The flexible fibres are delivered through blood vessels using a catheter in a procedure similar to a stent placement. The team aims to position them in several veins near a target brain region and send carefully selected high-frequency signals through them. Where the resulting electrical fields interact, they should produce a lower-frequency field capable of stimulating that region.

The first major target is a deep brain structure involved in Parkinson’s disease, where conventional deep brain stimulation requires open brain surgery. NeuroBionics is also establishing a UK subsidiary to coordinate the project’s work here and build technical expertise and capabilities. If successful, the technology could offer a less invasive route to delivering deep brain stimulation therapies.

Professor Paterson comments, ‘It is pleasing to see the work that Prof Alex Green started over 20 years as a graduate student and clinical fellow with me and the late Professor Tipu Aziz, moving to the next phase of translation with the novel technology driven by NeuroBionics’.