Mint, Amber and GOLD - spinouts colour the future of neural implants

University spinouts are collaborating to advance therapeutic neural implants.

MintNeuro, an Imperial spinout developing next-generation neural implants based on advanced semiconductor technology, is partnering with Amber Therapeutics and Imperial College London to develop modular, medical grade chips that can be combined into tiny implantable systems.

Funded through an £808,608 Innovate UK Smart Grant, the GOLD project aims to co-develop a ‘neural chipset’ – multiple function-specific chips designed to work together across many applications – which it will integrate into a single device.

Initially, this will build on the expertise of Amber Therapeutics, a startup from Oxford founded by a tech transfer partnership between universities, to develop an implantable medical device for the treatment of mixed urinary incontinence, a debilitating condition for which there is no single treatment option.

Ultimately the project will yield a platform for the creation of new implantable devices with therapeutic application in other medical conditions that can be addressed through the nervous system.

Professor Tim Constandinou, Professor of Bioelectronics at Imperial and co-founder of MintNeuro, said:

“The range of conditions we can currently treat with neural or bioelectronic implants is quite limited, in part due to the huge effort required to develop and validate new devices. There has been a lot of re-inventing the wheel in an industry shaped by the regulatory landscape.

“Through projects like GOLD, we are working directly with industry partners to leverage advanced chip technology and the semiconductor ecosystem to greatly expand the range of conditions that could benefit from neural implants.”

Neural implants as therapy

Over 1 billion people worldwide are affected neurological conditions, which include stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, narcolepsy, motor neurone disease and many more. In the UK, as many as 1 in 6 people are affected, with prevalence increasing due to an ageing population and reduced infant mortality rates.

While scientific understanding of neurological conditions has advanced significantly in recent years, such conditions remain difficult to treat. The brain is difficult to access, protected by the skull and the blood-brain barrier, meaning precise diagnosis or monitoring is hard and therapeutic interventions are challenging to deliver.

Neural implants offer a promising route forward. The nervous system uses electricity to communicate across billions of cells in our brain called neurons. By connecting tiny wires called electrodes, implants can interact by sensing or affecting activity in the brain and nervous system.

This promises new interventions and therapies in conditions with few or limited treatment options. Neural implants can, for example, be used to bypass a dysfunctional pathway to address or alleviate symptoms of a neurological condition or injury. They have the potential to improve quality of life for millions of people worldwide.

Established bioelectronic interventions include cochlear implants, which have enabled over 1 million people with hearing impairment to perceive sound, and deep brain stimulation which can reduce the severity of motor symptoms in Parkinson’s and essential tremor. As semiconductor technology advances, bioelectronics experts like the co-founders of MintNeuro believe it is possible to develop smaller effective systems capable of therapeutic intervention in a much wider set of conditions.

The pathway towards wider adoption

For this to happen, the underpinning technology needs to be developed to meet the needs of industry and patients. Think back to the earliest hard disk drives – digital information storage was useful, but the need to find somewhere to put a device the size of a small outbuilding limited adoption until their size was reduced.

Size is not the only factor influencing wider adoption of neural implants, as MintNeuro’s CEO, Dr Dorian Haci, explains further: “Developing an implantable device-based intervention can cost hundreds of millions of pounds. You need to create highly complex electronics with tight power and size constraints, and then meet very strict regulatory requirements. Because of this, innovation in this space is costly and risky, which hugely limits the number of players.”

MintNeuro believes that it can solve this issue by developing a library of tiny, specialised ‘chiplets’ with different functions – such as sensing, stimulation or processing – which can then be efficiently combined to create custom solutions for different applications.

“In the past, when implantable devices were relatively simple, these could be developed using off-the-shelf components on a circuit board,” says Dr Haci. “However, as the latest medical applications demand more capability, and the electronics become more complex, the only option is to develop a custom chip known as an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). This costs device manufacturers millions of pounds, takes years to develop, and often requires multiple iterations to get it right.”

“Our solution is to develop a set of tiny, highly optimised function-specific chips, which are rigorously tested with evidence to support regulatory approvals. We can then rapidly and efficiently combine these in customised systems that meet our partners’ needs with our ‘secret sauce.’”

The GOLD project puts MintNeuro at the heart of device development, providing an opportunity to develop and validate this technique with an existing implant – Amber’s Picostim™, which is currently in several investigational clinical studies.

MintNeuro - developed at Imperial

MintNeuro was born within Imperial’s Centre for Bio-Inspired Technology. Its Chief Technology Officer, Tim Constandinou has led multiple research projects looking at brain machine interfaces, neural implants and advanced microelectronics, evaluating the potential of these technologies to monitor and intervene in a range of neurological conditions.

CEO, Dr Dorian Haci, joined Imperial as a Master’s student in Tim’s research group over a decade ago and progressed through a PhD, postdoctoral position, and a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship before founding and taking the leading role at MintNeuro. Many of the company’s employees have had a similar academic journey, as Tim notes:

“Lots of our staff have strong links to Imperial. That’s not sentimental – it’s because Imperial has world-leading expertise and knowhow in this field, and the university can attract and shape world-class talent as a result.”

The company has worked across Imperial’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, taking part in the MedTech SuperConnector programme before spinning out under Founders Choice in November 2022.

Since then, MintNeuro has won a place on Innovate UK’s Biomedical Catalyst Neurotech Accelerator and was selected to the inaugural cohort of Chipstart UK. Tim and Dorian both credit Imperial with supporting the entrepreneurial mindset they needed to pursue MintNeuro.

Dorian said: “This kind of work requires speaking to as many stakeholders as possible, starting with potential customers. In our case, we also need to consult patients and clinicians, as well as mentors, and find a way to transform an exciting idea or piece of technology into a product that people need and will pay for. Imperial Enterprise Lab was instrumental in shaping my thinking in this area, and the various acceleration and incubation programmes gave us great opportunities to interact with other businesses and validate customer demand.”

Tim said: “It is exciting to take this translational journey with MintNeuro. The GOLD project will allow us to innovate, define our product, and put it in the hands of a first potential customer. What started out in my lab as academic projects have been shaped into a business that is now working directly with partners and collaborating to use our technology to improve existing neural implants. This will ultimately develop a new paradigm that will greatly increase the use cases for this exciting treatment option.”