Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies (GLNT) has received $1.9 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to improve the efficacy of deep brain stimulation (DBS) programming for Parkinson’s disease patients, and minimize time required by a clinician to optimize settings.
The company’s technology combines wearable motor symptom-sensing and a DBS platform into a single integrated system. Said system relies on algorithms for searching settings and selecting optimal parameters using real-time closed-loop feedback from sensors to adjust DBS. The validated closed-loop system for efficiently programming DBS can improve patient care and expand access to underserved populations.
GLNeuroTech has previously commercialized Kinesia, a system of wearable sensors and mobile apps for assessing Parkinson’s and other movement disorders.While DBS therapy can provide effective motor symptom relief, challenges exist with respect to programming the system after the electrode and pulse generator have been implanted. Therefore, clinicians must manually adjust settings such as stimulation contact, amplitude, pulse width, and frequency to determine the combination that provides the most symptom relief at the lowest battery power. As DBS systems are providing more targeted control through increased parameter sets, the number of potential combinations and required programming time grow exponentially.
GLNT has previously commercialized Kinesia, a system of wearable sensors and mobile apps for assessing Parkinson’s and other movement disorders. The company will use this Phase II SBIR funding to target their core technology to programming DBS, building upon successful Phase I pilot studies.
“We demonstrated in two studies that intelligent algorithms using sensor feedback could successfully identify optimal stimulation parameters that significantly improved motor symptoms or maintained therapeutic benefits while reducing stimulation amplitude by an average of 50% to decrease battery usage”, stated Dustin Heldman, PhD, Biomedical Research Manager.
Once technology integration is complete, the system will be validated in a multi-center clinical trial in collaboration with Dr. Jerrold Vitek at the University of Minnesota.
[Via: Hit Consultant]