Today, incomplete Spinal Cord Injuries (SCI) affect as many as 450,000 people in the U.S with the injury most often being incomplete. Incomplete SCI often disrupts spinal reflexes, causing spasticity and motor impairments that are poorly addressed by existing therapies.
BioCircuit Technologies https://www.biocircuit.com, based in Atlanta, a development stage medical device company, received a $1.7 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS within NIH with the intent to fund $4.6 million over the next five years to do research on enhanced rehabilitation related to SCIs.
The award will be shared with partnering laboratories at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and the National Center for Adaptive Neurotechnologies (NCAN) at the Stratton VA Medical Center in Albany N.Y.
The funding will enable researchers to not only develop a system for enhanced rehabilitation to treat incomplete spinal cord injuries, but also o treat other disorders such as stroke and multiple sclerosis. Specifically, researchers are going to work to develop and validate a novel, non-invasive system for the practical deployment of spinal reflex conditioning therapy.
In other company news, Battelle https://www.battelle.org with headquarters in Ohio, recently launched a new company called AmplifyBio. The new company is going to focus on research and development for next generation therapies such as Cell and Gene Therapies (CGT). AmplifyBio is a $200 million start-up moving intelligently in the rapidly developing field involving CGT.
The new company to be located near Battelle’s Ohio campus, will work to accelerate the development of next generation therapies by creating and optimizing new platforms and technologies.
The goal is to solve challenges in order to develop complex therapies to help people. The company’s facility will house a state-of-the-art laboratory and use equipment to help the company accelerate research into novel cell and gene therapies.