Current Project (2024-2026)

Research Team: Timothy Constandinou, Ahmad Shah-Idil
Project Partners: Mint Neurotechnologies Ltd  (Dorian Haci, Jonathan Casey, Andrea Mifsud, Song Luan) and Amber Therapeutics Ltd (Tim Denison, Sean Doherty, Moaad Benjaber, Kylie de Jager)
Funding: Innovate UK Smart Grant

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Background

Neurological conditions are the leading cause of disability and the second cause of deaths worldwide. Monitoring and treating these diseases is incredibly difficult as targets are encased in thick bone and special membranes in the circulatory system block many drugs.

Advanced neural implants, comprising electronics placed inside the skull or spine, are an exciting technology that could revolutionise our understanding of the brain and treat associated conditions---enabling people to walk again; children to hear for the first time; or relieving the symptoms of epilepsy or Parkinson's disease.

However, such devices require complex electronics with tight constraints on size and power, whilst also complying with the most stringent regulatory requirements (Active Implantable Medical Devices). As a result, implants can take years and hundreds of millions of pounds to develop---a major barrier and risk for innovators, investors, and small-medium sized companies.

Our vision is to create a set of modular chips (or microchips) that meet these challenges. Advanced packaging techniques combine these together into tiny systems to enable companies and researchers to rapidly address different needs. In this way, we minimise implant size and power consumption, opening up new approaches for surgery (akin to the switch to keyhole surgery) that reduce risks to patients.

This project is a collaboration between Mint Neurotechnologies, Amber Therapeutics, and Imperial College London to co-create a "chipset" (group of chips designed to work together for a specific application) and package it into a device. This will first constitute the electronics of a medical device for treating mixed urinary incontinence (no other treatment available on the market yet) and will unlock new device therapies beyond the first application.

More long-term, these chipset and packaging capabilities will enable faster, cheaper development of implants, making the technology accessible for patients with rarer or currently untreated neurological conditions.