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Industry Pioneers to Highlight Tenth Annual Neurotech Leaders Forum Several neurotechnology industry pioneers will be part of the program at the 2010 Neurotech Leaders Forum , to be held in San Francisco, CA September 23-24. Reese Terry, cofounder of Cyberonics Inc. and CEO of neurotech startup Trifectas Medical, will keynote the tenth annual event on September 24. Elliot Krames, former president o…

Neurotech Reports Announces Dates for 2009 Leaders Forum Neurotech Reports, the publisher of this newsletter, announced that the ninth annual Neurotech Leaders Forum will be held in Newport Beach, CA October 26-27, 2009. For the first time, this event will be held in conjunction with the NeuroInvestment Conference, which is targeted at representatives of the neuropharmaceutical industry. NI Research, publisher of the newsletter NeuroInvestment, will collaborate with Neurotech Reports on the event.

Neural Engineers Convene in Long Beach for Neural Inferfaces Conference Nearly 500 neural engineers, clinicians, and researchers attended the 2010 Neural Interfaces Conference in Long Beach, CA in June 2010. The event is the offshoot of the NIH’s Neural Prosthesis Workshop and also incorporates the DBS Consortium meeting. Terry Hambrecht, the first head of the NIH Neural Prosthesis Program, led the conference off with a keynote presentation on the history of neural prostheses.

The Future and the Past Come Together The tenth annual Neurotech Leaders Forum, to be held in San Francisco September 23-24, 2010, will give attendees an opportunity to look back on what has happened in the neurotechnology industry over the last decade. It will also offer a glimpse at the future of our industry, as we discuss new technologies, new startups, and new relationships among today’s vendors.

ial director July 2010 issue BrainGate, an implanted brain-computer interface that enables direct control of computer or other devices , generated a huge wave of publicity worldwide for Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc. of Foxborough, MA, the company that developed the system. Taking advantage of the good press, Cyberkinetics went public in 2004 and its stock was listed on the OTC Bulletin Board.

Turning Weapons into Arms There has not been an overwhelming amount of good news to emerge from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last several years. But one very significant and very positive development has been the emergence of the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The program, administered at Johns Hopkins University with collaborati…

Marketed Targeting One of the greatest technical challenges confronting the neurotechnology industry is identifying appropriate anatomical targets for neuromodulation, particularly for brain stimulation. In the few years that deep brain stimulation has been approved for treating neurological disorders, clinicians and researchers have used a number of different targets within the brain. For individuals with Parkinson’s disease, DBS therapy has targeted either the subthalamic nucleus or the globus pallidus internus.

Neuros Medical Seeks to Commercialize Nerve Block as Treatment for Pain ial director Neuros Medical Inc., headquartered in Willoughby, OH (about 20 miles east of downtown Cleveland) was launched in 2008 to bring to market Nerve Block, a selective and reversible neurostimulation technique for completely blocking transmission of impulses in targeted nerves. The company’s initial goal is to develop an…

Conflicts and Interests One of the little-noticed elements of the recently passed health care reform legislation in the U.S. is the incorporation of the physician payment sunshine act, which forces medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturers to report just about any kind of payment made to or on behalf of physicians. The bill was put forward largely at the behest of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), despite the fact that he did not vote for the final health care bill.

Robotics Tools Augment Neurorehabilitation Market Advances in robotics technology are offering new opportunities for vendors of neurorehabilitation systems to enhance their product offerings. Robotic systems have been used in products such as the Lokomat, which helps physical therapists at 250 institutions worldwide deliver treadmill-based therapies to individuals with neurological disorders such as spinal cord injury.