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Valencia Technologies, the Valencia, CA developer of hypertension neuromodulation devices, is one of the newest entrants in the neurotechnology industry. But its management and engineering team is anything but new, featuring executives from established neurotech firms such as Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and Advanced Bionics. The company has developed a subcutaneous neuromodulation system for treatment of hypertension.

One of the greatest challenges confronting investigators and entrepreneurs developing new neurotech therapies has been devising a clinical trial protocol that accounts for the placebo effect. In order to fulfill requirements for a randomized control trial, neurotech device makers often devise a form of “sham” stimulation that prevents trial participants from knowing whether they’re in the treatment or control arm of a study.

The potential market for upper-extremity neuroprosthetics continues to look promising and two recent developments in the U.S. and Europe have addressed critical issues amputees have faced with existing devices. These include difficulty in donning, doffing, and controlling a motorized prosthetic and the lack of sensory input needed for performing tasks requiring the dexterity of a natural arm. In Eu…

About 85 neurotechnology industry professionals met in San Francisco earlier this month for the 14th annual Neurotech Leaders Forum, hosted , the publisher of this newsletter. The conference kicked off with an overview of recent events in the neurotechnology industry. He cited the spate of neurotechnology industry IPOs as a positive indicator of growth. Other noteworthy trends of the last year incl…

Neurotech Reports, the publisher of this newsletter, announced the winners of the 2014 Gold Electrode Awards. The awards were presented at the 2014 Neurotech Leaders Forum in San Francisco on October 20. The Gold Electrode Award for Best New Product was presented to NeuroPace Inc. of Mountain View, CA for its RNS stimulation device. The device, which uses closed loop-stimulation to treat epilepsy, was approved year.

A year ago, we reported in this space a sense of “guarded optimism” that permeated the 2013 Neurotech Leaders Forum [NBR Oct13 p2]. The mood at this year’s conference was much less guarded and much more optimistic given the wide range of new funding initiatives, partnerships, and IPOs in the neurotechnology industry [see article p7]. Despite all the good news, though, there are still some areas of concern.

One of the greatest challenges confronting the neuroprosthetics field is the integration of meaningful sensory input into prosthetic limbs. Two new research findings—each challenging conventional thinking in somatosensory neuroscience—may assist neural engineers incorporating sensory feedback into prosthetic or paralyzed upper limbs. Traditional understanding in neuroscience is that tactile sensations from the skin are only assembled to form a complete experience in the cerebral cortex.

Executives from several emerging and established neurotechnology firms will be presenting at the 14th annual Neurotech Leaders Forum, which takes place in San Francisco October 20-21. Promising neurotechnology firms presenting at the conference include Spinal Modulation Inc., Cervel Neurotech, Inc., Evoke Neuroscience, Advanced Brain Monitoring, Inc., Brain Resource Ltd., ClickBrain, and several others.

Although the neurotech device industry is currently pursuing a range of clinical application areas, up until now, the major revenue source has been the chronic pain market. Industry heavyweights like Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, and Boston Scientific still get the lion’s share of their neuromodulation revenue from sales of spinal cord stimulation systems. One of the largest impediments to growth of…

While many forms of neuromodulation apply electrical stimulation directly to a target area to achieve a neurological effect, a novel approach uses neurostimulation to produce an indirect effect, specifically, opening the blood-brain barrier in order to augment pharmacological therapies. Recently, two different teams reported research and commercial progress in developing this therapeutic strategy.