Listen to this articleThe National Institutes of Health awarded a group of Garden State and fellow researchers a $2.8 million grant to improve implantable devices for patients with epilepsy.
RWJBarnabas Health announced the three-year award Aug. 27, which will be shared by a team made up of scientists from Rutgers Health, Hoboken-based Stevens Institute of Technology and Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta.
“The grant will fund a program to develop the next generation of responsive neurostimulation devices that can be implanted in the brains of people affected with severe epileptic seizures to reduce or eliminate their occurrence,” RWJBarnabas explained.
About 2.9 million adults in the U.S. reported having active epilepsy in 2021 and 2022 – or about 1% of the population – according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC added that, in 2019, the average annual health care spending for epilepsy and seizures was $24.5 billion in the U.S.
According to the Epilepsy Foundation New Jersey, more than 123,000 people in the Garden State are living with the neurological disorder, where “surges of electrical activity in your brain can cause recurring seizures.”
Bringing the device to market
Hai Sun, vice chair of clinical affairs and associate professor of neurosurgery in the Department of Neurosurgery at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and chief of Neurosurgery at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, an RWJBarnabas Health facility, said the research project will focus on “on developing a new treatment option for patients with drug-resistant epilepsy.”
Sun added, “Our goal is to design and implement a new generation of devices that are equipped with a better seizure prediction algorithm and can stimulate larger areas of the brain where seizures initiate. We plan to bring this device to market, in the next five years.”
By the numbers
- About 2.9 million adults in the U.S. reported having active epilepsy in 2021 and 2022.
- In 2019, the average annual health care spending for epilepsy and seizures was $24.5 billion in the U.S.
– SOURCE: CDC
The researchers noted that a current device is effective in reducing seizure frequency among patients and eliminates seizures in 15% to 20% of cases.
Feng Liu, an assistant professor at Stevens’ Charles V. Schaefer Jr. School of Engineering and Science, said the funding could lead to “a transformative treatment for patients with drug-resistant mesial temporal lobe epilepsy.”
“We look forward to working with the great team led by Dr. Hai Sun, comprised of neurosurgeons, epileptologists, artificial intelligence researchers and industry partners, to move this field forward,” Liu said.
In March, another RWJBarnabas Health facility – Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital – received a $2.4 million federal grant to develop new technology to better manage patients presenting with heart attacks.
