Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CONECTIF (Commercial assessment of a novel protocol for epilepsy characterisation with temporally interfering electric fields)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-03-01 bis 2023-02-28
The solution: Within my ERC Starting Grant Epi-Centrd, I demonstrated that the use of stimulation with intracranial electrodes can be extended beyond the current application, leading me to propose an additional use of the electrode interfaces to stimulate using Temporal Interference (TI) of electric fields to non-invasively explore previously inaccessible brain regions. Points of very focal electrical stimulation at significant distances from the fixed electrode interfaces can be created with interacting envelopes of electric fields provided from pairs of the already-implanted intracranial clinical electrodes or from transcutaneous electrodes. The value proposition of CONECTIF was to demonstrate preliminary efficacy of TI to dramatically address the 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. In CONECTIF we demonstrated the dramatically effective method of using non-invasive skin electrode to target deep nerve and brain targets. 3 human studies have been performed in both epilepsy and related-peripheral nerve diseases. The technologies developed in CONECTIF can return to the core ERC StG project EPI-Centrd and be further utilized in my new ERC Consolidator project EMUNITI for the identification of epileptic zones in other forms of epilepsy, not only in drug-resistant patients. The CONECTIF project delivered 6 publications, a patent (Patent EP 21306447), a startup company (VBTech), and licensing of the patent. My TI technology has achieved therapeutic DBS in epileptic rodents and I have scaled-up to the dimensions of the human brain to achieve the same results in epileptic patients and other related diseases. Although an excellent result, standard TI stimulates subcortically but the focality is limited. By contrast, multipolar TI (mTI) provides a point of focal stimulation better than a standard clinically implanted stimulation electrode, with full spatial and temporal control (topic of Patent EP 21306447).