This MIT spinout wants to spool hair-thin fibers into patients’ brains

You can’t start a company without a healthy dose of audacity, and this is certainly the case Neurobionics. The MIT-spinout thinks it could one day improve the lives of millions of people living with neurological conditions such as depression, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.

Well-known investor Steve Jurvetson of Future Ventures said that if all goes well for the 18-month-old suit, his approach could also target “the peripheral nervous system for pain, incontinence and a host of other applications.”

How? With what? In contrast to these overwhelming ambitions, NeuroBionics’ technology is small. Specifically, NeuroBionics aims to conduct what it has developed – bioelectric fibers the width of a human hair – through blood vessels in the brain using a procedure similar to stent placement to deliver neuromodulation therapy.

The fibers are powered by a fairly standard implantable battery that is the shape of an AirPod case, designed to last five to 10 years, and is used by other manufacturers of medical devices for spinal cord stimulation, among other things.

It’s a great alternative to drilling a hole in someone’s skull, as has long been the process with deep brain stimulation. Traditionally, when certain disorders do not respond to medication, metal electrodes are implanted in the heart to produce electrical impulses and control abnormal movement.

The NeuroBionics device is not only less invasive; the company uses carbon nanotubes instead of platinum or iridium oxide, which are common materials for those electrodes. While metals are minimally toxic and conduct electricity well, they can also dissolve, limiting their life and causing tissue damage. Carbon nanotubes, on the other hand, are cheaper, can apparently last longer, and make it much easier to get MRIs. (Among other things, metal can create bright spots in MRI images, making it harder to see the brain).

According to MJ Antonini, CEO of the Cambridge, Massachusetts startup, the whole shebang is the result of 10 years of research on fiber technology at MIT. He co-founded the company while a student at the school, where he secured three patents that give MIT a small ownership stake in the business.

He took an interesting route from point A to point B. In a Zoom call, as Antonini showed a coiled version of the barely visible fiber, he explained that he has a doctorate from Harvard and MIT through a 55-year-old. program called Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.

Calling it a “niche program that they don’t advertise for the wrong reasons,” Antonini said his studies involved two years of medical school at Harvard, followed by years of medical engineering and medical physics studies at MIT. After that, he decided to “go beyond the cool paper (research)” and “create a real product and an actual medical company.”

Indeed, Antonini, who is French, said he has been a postdoctoral researcher for a couple more years to ponder how he could bring that technology portfolio into the real world. Finally, he left school in early 2023 with Nicki Driscoll, who was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and is now the CTO of NeuroBionics.

It will take a long time to find out what becomes of its fiber technology. Like Jurvetson, Antonini insists that eventually NeuroBionics’ bioelectronic fibers could be used in a whole spectrum of applications, including to deliver drugs, ablate tissue in the brain, and treat conditions related to the spine and nervous system peripheral

“Eventually” is still some time away, though. For now, the outfit has just closed $5 million in funding led by Dolby Family Ventures, with the participation of Future Ventures, GreyMatter Capital, and several other backers, and will use the capital to finish work on its clinical device.

Once completed, the next step would be to try to demonstrate its safety and effectiveness in pigs, which share many similarities with humans in terms of anatomy, physiology and genetics. The FDA will then review the work, after which NeuroBionics could apply for an investigational device exemption (IDE). It could then launch its first initial feasibility studies in humans.

Asked when his technology could actually reach the market, Antonini hesitated momentarily before proposing 2030.

Of course, I wouldn’t have worked on the startup if I didn’t think I could navigate these next steps.

Patient investors like Jurvetson must help. “Deep brain stimulation has been shown to work in stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, chronic pain, tremors and others.” Jurvetson wrote in an email: “But 99% of people who could benefit just refuse because it requires major open brain surgery with needles implanted in deep regions of the brain.”

As for Jurvetson, technology like NeuroBionics opens the market – including because there is only a concentrated pocket of large and advanced hospitals that offer surgery today.

The “application domain” for the startup’s “minimally invasive stent,” Jurvetson enthuses, “is huge.”