Project description
New tech treatment for drug-resistant epilepsy
While most people with epilepsy are able to control their seizures with medication, one in three cannot. They have drug-resistant epilepsy. The ERC-funded CONECTIF project will help to find new ways to manage these cases. It will work to improve therapeutic intervention in drug-resistant patients. Specifically, it aims to develop a simplified, less-invasive method capable of localising epileptic tissue, including the ability to non-invasively investigate previously inaccessible and surgically complicated brain regions. The goal is to dramatically reduce technological limitations in the identification of epileptic zones in the brain. The new method, which uses temporally interfering electric fields, is expected to improve therapeutic targets.
Objective
The ERC StG project “Epilepsy Controlled with Electronic Neurotransmitter Delivery (EPI-Centrd)” is focused on improved therapeutic intervention in drug-resistant patients with surgically-complicated forms of epilepsy. These patients represent a large demographic needing new commercial solutions, as there are fifty million people in the world with epilepsy and up to 50 cases of new-onset epilepsy per 100,000 people each year, where 30% of these cases are patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. Although EPI-Centrd provides state-of-the-art treatments for epileptic zones in the brain of drug-resistant patients, it does not include technology for improved identification of such epileptic zones. This ERC PoC project “The Commercial Assessment of a Novel Protocol for Epilepsy Characterisation with Temporally Interfering Electric Fields (CONECTIF)” dramatically improves the traditional limitations in the identification of epileptic zones in the brain of patients by providing a simplified, less-invasive method capable of localizing epileptic tissue, including the ability to non-invasively investigate previously inaccessibility and surgically-complicated brain regions. The new method utilizing temporally interfering electric fields could have a massive commercial potential and, if successful, would dramatically improve the therapeutic targets for technologies developed in the EPI-Centrd project and for the identification of epileptic zones in other forms of epilepsy, not only in drug-resistant patients.
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Funding Scheme
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept GrantHost institution
13284 Marseille
France