European Innovation Council Awards Grant for Brain-Computer Interface Tech

ONWARD Medical N.V. has been awarded a second European Innovation Council (EIC) grant  to further develop brain-computer interface (BCI) technology that would restore mobility and upper limb function in spinal cord injury patients.
 
Under the EIC Pathfinder funding program, the council bestowed a €3.7 million grant to ONWARD and its research partners, including EPFL and CEA-Clinatec.The project is entitled, “Auto-Adaptive Neuromorphic Brain Machine Interface (NEMO BMI): Toward Fully Embedded Neuroprosthetics.” ONWARD receives €1 million under the grant’s terms.

“The additional funding from EIC provides strong validation of the work ONWARD and our partners are doing to advance the use of BCI to improve mobility,” ONWARD Medical CEO Dave Marver said. “We are collaborating with the best in the field to develop and eventually commercialize a BCI platform that we hope will optimize the effectiveness of our therapies to restore movement for people living with paralysis.”
 
The NEMO-BMI project will support usability improvements that enable BCI use to support upper and lower limb movement. Auto-adaptive algorithms are under development for brain decoding and brain-guided spinal cord stimulation patterns and will eventually be embedded in miniaturized hardware. The program aims to further enhance BCI technology to make it reliable, small, and easy to implant, as well as to improve the BCI’s usability and manufacturability.
 
The NEMO-BMI project will complement the ongoing work of the Reverse Paralysis project, for which ONWARD and its research partners received a €3.6 million EIC grant in June 2022. These proceeds are being used to fund integration between ONWARD’s implanted ARC-IM system, which delivers targeted, programmed stimulation of the spinal cord, and Clinatec’s WIMAGINE, a fully implantable device approved for chronic use in clinical trials in two European countries, which records and decodes the brain’s cortical signal to predict a person’s desired movement intentions. While NEMO-BMI is a separate project from Reverse Paralysis, its goal is to build on the Reverse Paralysis framework and incorporate any improvements into the joint ONWARD-Clinatec BCI technology platform. The technology improvements developed in the NEMO-BMI project will be evaluated independently and then used in clinical trials as part of the Reverse Paralysis project.
 
ONWARD was the first place Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Award winner last year. The award was granted to ONWARD and several research partners for their submission, “Walking naturally after spinal cord injury using a brain-spine interface.” This application focused on the work being done under the Reverse Paralysis project to develop a fully implantable brain-computer interface to help people walk more naturally after spinal cord injury with the benefit of ONWARD’s ARC Therapy.
 
Spinal cord injury (SCI) represents a major unmet medical need for which there is no cure. Approximately 7 million people globally have a spinal cord injury, with more than 650,000 in the United States and Europe alone. The quality of life of people with SCI can be poor, with paralysis and loss of sensation, issues with blood pressure control and trunk stability, increased potential for infection, incontinence, and loss of sexual function. Assistance is required for daily living activities. And SCI is costly, with the average lifetime cost for paraplegia (paralysis of the legs) of $2.5 million and $5 million for tetraplegia (paralysis of all four limbs). Treatments are urgently needed to restore movement and improve quality of life.
 
ONWARD is a medical technology company creating therapies to restore movement, independence, and health in people with spinal cord injuries. ONWARD’s work builds on more than a decade of basic science and preclinical research conducted at leading neuroscience laboratories. ONWARD’s ARC Therapy, which can be delivered by implantable (ARC-IM) or external (ARC-EX) systems, is designed to deliver targeted, programmed spinal cord stimulation to restore movement and other functions in people with spinal cord injury, ultimately improving their quality of life.
 
ONWARD has received five Breakthrough Device Designations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration encompassing both ARC-IM and ARC-EX. ARC-EX is an external, non-invasive platform consisting of a wearable stimulator and wireless programmer. Positive top-line data were reported in September 2022 from the company’s first pivotal study, called Up-LIFT, evaluating the ability of ARC-EX Therapy to improve upper extremity strength and function. The company is now preparing marketing approval submissions for the United States and Europe. ARC-IM consists of an implantable pulse generator and lead that is placed near the spinal cord. The company completed its first-in-human use of the ARC-IM neurostimulator in May 2022.
 
ONWARD is headquartered in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. It maintains a Science and Engineering Center in Lausanne, Switzerland, and has a growing U.S. presence in Boston. The company has an academic partnership with.NeuroRestore, a collaboration between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV).