Current therapies, regulating nerve cell activity in brain dysfunctions, suffer from severe limitations. Most pharmaceuticals's effectiveness and containment of undesired side-effects are poor. For Epilepsy, drugs are ineffective in ~35% of the cases, so that neurosurgery remains the only treatment despite its obvious risks.
IN-FET focused on epilepsy as a major brain disorders, affecting ~1.2% of the population (i.e. more than 50M of people worldwide). It has a broad spectrum of underlying causes, and it is associated to repeated occurrence of seizures with a major negative impact on their overall quality of life. These are "electric storms" in the brain, altering the physiological activity of nerve cells. While intervening on root causes of epilepsy involves an array of interventions (e.g. gene therapy, phenotyping, personalised medicine, etc.), regulating the sudden occurrence of seizures might be within reach.
In the last years, societies and investors witnessed a strong interest for neurotechnologies for brain disorders. Electrical/optical/magnetic/piezo stimulation of nerve cells require no systemic drug administration and can be computer-controlled. This appears uniquely positioned for effectively tackling seizure suppression. And yet, all require invasive interventions, with necessary gene manipulation or “augmentation” whose long-term effects are unknown.
IN-FET proposed a breakthrough microtechnological and microelectronic alternative to neuro-modulation. Alternative to traditional electrical brain pacemakers and genetic engineering, the innovative technology IN-FET has dreamt of aims at controlling the pathological “excess” of electrical activity in nerve cells by altering the local concentration of ions, key to neuronal activity, such as potassium and calcium. IN-FET called it "ionic actuation" and performed substantial research and innovation activities to pave the road for this concept to be validated and possibly adopted in the near future.
IN-FET overall aimed at exploring ionic actuation for altering neuronal excitability. Setting the ground for such an ambitious long-term challenge, IN-FET focused towards three short-term objectives:
1) the in-depth electrochemical characterisation of the most appropriate polymers for electro-actuating ion release;
2) the biophysical, device-level, and device-electrolyte-membrane interface modelling for understanding strength and weaknesses of ionic actuation;
3) the experimental assessment of biocompatibility and effectiveness of ionic control of neuronal activity, across a series of in vitro experimental model of physiological and pathological activity.
While these were only partly achieved, IN-FET's results led to advancing our neurobiological, microtechnological, electrochemical, and modeling understanding. These advances lay the foundations for a subsequent exploitation of the technology in implantable devices for preclinical applications, where a clear road-map has been provided.
