News

Neurotech Leaders Forum Participants Discuss Technical and Management Issues Staff Report About 70 neurotechnology executives and financial professionals met in San Francisco earlier this month for the fourth annual Neurotech Leaders Forum, organized . During a well received keynote address, Chris Chavez, president and CEO of Advanced Neuromodulation Systems, Inc., described many of the technical and management issues he confronted building the company into a successful and profitable firm during his tenure.

Neurotech Leaders Forum to Include Short Course on Investment The fourth annual Neurotech Leaders Forum, scheduled for October 4-5, 2004 at the Crowne Plaza San Francisco International Airport, will move to a two-day format for the first time. On the afternoon of the first day, the event will feature a short course devoted to investment advice for neurotech start-ups and early-stage firms. The sess…

Swords into Neurons When Howard Hughes formed the medical institute that bears his name in 1953, some saw it as a scheme to shelter income from his newly formed Hughes Aircraft Company from the clutches of the Internal Revenue Service. Hughes was reportedly no great fan of the IRS, and altruism aside, the opportunity to deprive the government of tax revenue from his aircraft business seemed too good to pass up, the story goes.

Leveling the Playing Field The FDA’s decision to deny approval of Cyberonics’ VNS therapy for treatment-resistant depression [see article, this page] is as troubling as it is confounding. Like Cyberonics CEO Skip Cummins, we find the decision “totally outrageous, incomprehensible, and out-of-the-blue.” But we also wonder whether undue influence from the pharmaceutical industry, which makes $14 bill…

New Devices Promise Electrical Control of Neural Growth by Warren M. Grill, senior technical editor Electrical activation of the nervous system is used to restore function following neurological injury or disease. These devices, described as neural prostheses or as functional electrical stimulation, use electrical stimulation to produce actions such as muscle contraction, as in motor prostheses, or the perception of sound, as in cochlear prostheses.

Neurotechnology’s Farm System Major-league baseball teams have learned the value of minor-league franchises for developing star players of the future. The neurotechnology industry has a potent farm system of its own, namely the numerous university and private research institutions developing new generations of neural prostheses, neurostimulation devices, and neurosensing electronics. In this issue,…

FDA Panel Recommends Approval of Vagus Nerve Stimulation for Depression Cyberonics, Inc., the Houston, TX manufacturer of vagus nerve stimulation systems, announced that the Neurological Devices Panel of FDA’s Medical Devices Advisory Committee voted 5 to 2 on June 15 to recommend approval with conditions of the company’s VNS therapy “as an adjunctive long-term treatment of chronic or recurrent depression for patients over the age of 18 who are experiencing a major depressive episode that has not had an adequate…

The Value of Neurotechnology Big news comes to the neurotechnology industry only so often. This month, two major events promise to reshape the status of this relatively new industry. The first is Boston Scientific Corp.’s purchase of Advanced Bionics [see article, p1]. And the second was the FDA panel’s recommended approval of Cyberonics’ VNS therapy for treatment-resistant depression [see article, this page], which nearly doubled the value of the company’s stock overnight.

A Two-Way Street In the three years we’ve been publishing this newsletter, we’ve reported on a number of ways in which electronics technology can help the nervous system. In our article on neural-silicon hybrids this month [see p1], we’re pleased to report the nervous system is ready to return the favor. Biologically inspired processors—perhaps even neurons themselves—may soon play a role in the next generation of computational devices.

Neural-Silicon Hybrids Point to New Era in Technology and Warren Grill, senior technical editor Direct interfaces between small networks of nerve cells and synthetic devices promise to advance our understanding of neuronal function and may yield a new generation of hybrid devices that exploit the computational capacities of biological neural networks. There are several research teams in the U.S. and Europe that are currently working on so-called neural-silicon hybrid chips.