A tiny implant delivers drugs directly to the source of a seizure, stopping it before it takes hold. This matters because millions of people with neurological disorders have few treatment options. Promising drugs often fail in late-stage testing—they cannot reach the right brain target, or they cause severe side effects by affecting healthy regions. The researcher has already shown that a minimally invasive bioelectronic device can prevent seizures by using an electric field to push inhibitory neurotransmitters exactly where they are needed. But the technology is not yet ready for widespread use. Key challenges remain: electrodes cannot store enough charge, implants must learn to respond to disease biomarkers, and the devices need to stay flexible and effective inside the body for years. If this project succeeds, it could create a platform for personalised medicine that transforms treatment for epilepsy and other intractable neurological disorders. For epilepsy alone, 30% of patients do not respond to conventional drugs. A device that delivers therapy on demand, only when and where it is needed, could offer those patients a real alternative to living with uncontrolled seizures.
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Millions of people suffer from neurological disorders for which there are few, if any, viable treatment options. Meanwhile, many promising drugs designed to treat neurological disorders fail in late-stage testing because of the inability to reach the desired target within the brain and/or due to interactions with healthy regions that cause serious side effects. I have developed an innovation solution to these problems: a minimally invasive bioelectronic device that can electrophoretically deliver drugs when and where they are needed. My most recent research demonstrated that such a device can prevent seizures by delivering inhibitory neural transmitters to the seizure source. These results have evoked visions of a platform technology for personalized medicine that could revolutionize treatment for neurological disorders, including epilepsy. However, there are significant challenges related to materials and device engineering that require further break-throughs for this technology to reach its full potential. These challenges include overcoming electrode capacitance limitations, engineering implants to respond to biomarkers of disease, and realizing long term tissue compliance and efficacy of drug delivery. I will leverage my extensive experience with state-of-the-art materials, devices and neurological applications to take a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach to overcoming these critical challenges. The research plan will comprise developing new bioelectronic materials and device concepts and validating them in disease models for epilepsy - a disorder for which 30% of patients do not respond to conventional drug treatments. Altogether these efforts will accelerate electronically controlled drug delivery devices towards large-scale implementation in the clinic to the benefit of the many who are afflicted with intractable neurological disorders.
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