Stéphanie Lacour

Collège de France

Innovation technologique Liliane Bettencourt (2023-2024)

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - La neurotechnologie : Designing Brain Interfaces for Pediatric Applications

Patient-Centered Neurotechnologies: Navigating the Innovation Landscape

Colloque coorganisé par Stéphanie Lacour, chaire Innovation technologique Liliane Bettencourt et Mme Karen Rommelfanger.

Intervenant(s)

Timothy Denison, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford

The emerging field of bioelectronics provides a novel alternative to pharmaceutical intervention by using electronic hardware to intelligently sense and stimulate the nervous system.

I will summarize the challenges and opportunities of translational bioelectronic systems face when bridging basic science, regulated technology, and health care economics – particularly for applications in paediatric medicine. This assessment motivates an innovation framework that leverages the unique capabilities of bioelectronic platforms -- from designing implantable scientific instruments that enable novel clinical neuroscience, to applying the resulting science to prototype new therapies. To provide an illustrative example of the platform and innovation framework, I will highlight experiences from the "Picostim-DyNeuMo," which is a collaborative, investigational research tool developed jointly by industry and academics. This system is targeting first-in-human clinical studies exploring challenging neurological disorders such as epilepsy, chronic pain, and disorders of consciousness, and the talk will emphasize the innovations required specifically for addressing paediatric epilepsy.

Professor Denison holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Engineering Science and Clinical Neurosciences at Oxford, where he explores the fundamentals of physiologic closed-loop systems in collaboration with the MRC Brain Network Dynamics Unit. Tim serves as an advisor to several governments and industry boards on the field of translational medical devices; in particular, helping define strategies for mapping scientific discovery to product development roadmaps within the regulatory and economic constraints of medical systems. To support translation to the clinic, he is a director and chief engineer of Amber Therapeutics, which designs, manufactures, and distributes the Picostim-DyNeuMo investigational research system that is active in four first-in-human trials. Prior to joining Oxford, Tim was a Technical and Bakken Fellow at Medtronic PLC and Vice President of Research & Core Technology for the Restorative Therapies Group, where he helped oversee the design of next generation neural interface and algorithm technologies for the treatment of chronic neurological disease. In 2015, he was elected to the College of Fellows for the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). He has an MS and PhD from MIT in electrical engineering, an AB in Physics and MBA from the University of Chicago.