Clinical neurostimulation startup Micro-Leads announced that it was awarded $10 million by a National Institutes of Health initiative for funding therapy development.
Somerville, Mass.-based Micro-Leads develops the HD64 implantable therapy system for spinal cord stimulation. The device is designed to treat lower back pain and focal pains of the trunk and extremities by delivering electrical stimulation to more pain fiber locations on the spinal cord.
Micro-Leads said the funding will help it develop the HD65 system and launch a clinical study, led by Dr. Julie Pilitsis of the Albany Medical College department of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics.
The $10 million in funding is from the NIH initiative “Helping to End Addiction Long-Term” (HEAL), along with private investors. Micro-Leads said the financing will span multiple years pending the completion of milestones.
“The HD64 therapy overcomes device limitations that have made it difficult to treat focal pains in the low-back and extremities for decades,” Micro-Leads clinical chairman Dr. Giancarlo Barolat said in a news release. “HD64 therapy could transform the SCS landscape by treating all types of pain in a single device.”
“HD64 provides the most expansive and high-resolution delivery of SCS therapy of any device ever made,” added Micro-Leads CEO Bryan McLaughlin. “We believe HD64 will maximize the therapeutic window across the board and enable practitioners to achieve more successful and consistent outcomes by eliminating the lead-alignment guesswork imposed by virtually every low-resolution SCS device on the market. We want every patient, everywhere, to experience pain relief with the first SCS procedure – not the third.”
“Because HD64 therapy effectively doubles the number of therapy points, there is a greater probability of providing pain relief for every patient,” said Pilitsis. “HD64 therapy places more electrodes across the spinal cord to deliver therapy to specific pain fibers which existing low-resolution devices cannot currently reach.”
