MintNeuro secures £1.4M collaborative grant to improve drug-resistant epilepsy care with wireless intracranial neuromonitoring.
January 27, 2023
Mint Neurotechnologies Ltd (MintNeuro) is excited to announce the award of a grant of £1.4M by the National Institute for Health and Care Research under their Invention for Innovation Product Development Award (i4i PDA) scheme for the project "Developing a wireless intracranial neuromonitoring device for drug-resistant epilepsy”. The project is led by Professor Timothy Constandinou and Dr Antonio Valentín, and brings together a multidisciplinary partnership between Imperial College London, King's College London, and MintNeuro.
Epilepsy affects around 600,000 people in the UK, with roughly a third unable to control their seizures with medication and subsequently being diagnosed with Drug-Resistant Epilepsy (DRE). This condition results in increased life challenges leading to lower social outcomes and patients suffering disproportionately from traumatic injuries and psychiatric diseases.
Surgery could help many, typically by removing parts of the brain that are involved in initiating seizures. However, in order to identify these parts of the brain and assess whether they can be safely removed, it is often necessary to perform invasive brain activity recordings. This is currently achieved by inserting electrodes into the brain through tiny holes in the skull and connecting them to wires that run through the skull and skin to equipment that records brain signals. Unfortunately, this process has two major downsides:
The patient has an open wound through to their brain for the monitoring period. The associated risks limit the monitoring period to around 3 weeks and limit the amount of data gathered (or not observing any seizures) which can prevent surgery.
The patients are tethered to a hospital bed. This can be deeply distressing for patients, (who may be constrained even from trips to the bathroom) and is sometimes not tolerable (e.g. for small children).
The project aims to develop a wireless intracranial neuromonitoring device that addresses these challenges by adopting a proprietary microchip technology provided by MintNeuro. This technology will make the device small, portable and wireless, while ensuring that the data quality is not compromised. This will pave the way for future devices that will enable a minimally-invasive procedure, making the technology available to a much larger patient population.
The team’s vision is to create an implantable device that will allow patients to return home soon after a minimally-invasive insertion surgery. This will allow for a longer monitoring period, with patients free to continue their normal lives, leading to less patient distress, more seizures captured, better localization data, reduced clinical costs, and ultimately better surgical outcomes – resulting in substantial long-term cost saving.
The project, which officially began in January 2023 and will run for 3 years, will consist of three phases. The first phase will focus on refining MintNeuro's proprietary microchip technology for use in epilepsy neuromonitoring. The second phase will involve conducting a first-in-human pilot study to validate the new technology against the current standard of care used in hospitals. The final phase will involve planning and supporting the translation of the technology for use in clinical settings.
MintNeuro is dedicated to working alongside our project partners to bring minimally-invasive wireless neuromonitoring technology to fruition. Together we aim to transform the treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy and improve patients' quality of life.