Presenter:
Kara Allanach, Director at SpineX.
Startup:
SpineX is a clinical-stage bioelectric MedTech company committed to delivering spinal cord neuromodulation technologies to improve the lives of people with neurological conditions.
Transcript
[00:00 – 04:05] Kara
Imagine if you or someone you love was unable to move their body as they pleased or control bladder function on their own. For millions of people in the US living with neurological conditions, this is their reality.
Here at SpineX, we are developing incredible new technology to treat these conditions by using electrical impulses to retrain the spinal cord. Our technology is built on groundbreaking research from the top scientists in the field of neuromodulation and is done non-invasively, without needles or surgery.
Although our technology has many potential applications, we have chosen to focus our first two commercial products on conditions with huge unmet clinical needs, movement disorder in children with cerebral palsy, or CP, and incontinence in adults with neurogenic bladder. These conditions together affect more than 2.5 million Americans.
Existing treatments are simply not good enough because they don’t fix the problems, they only reduce symptoms. At best, they’re short-term solutions, like drugs that cover up symptoms but have unmanageable side effects. And at worst, they’re invasive treatments, like Botox injections or nerve-severing surgery, causing irreversible long-term reductions in function.
With SpineX, now there is hope for these patients and their families. This is a three-year-old child with CP. Before SpineX, he was unable to take steps on his own but when we provided SpineX therapy, within five minutes, he was able to take steps. We have seen similar results, in line with their functional level, with nearly all of the more than 40 children who have undergone treatment with SpineX therapy so far. The really exciting part? We see durable improvements that last for several months beyond the final SpineX therapy treatment. Nothing else on the market can do this.
Neurogenic bladder, or NB, is common in spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis and stroke. NB often involves incontinence, frequent urinary tract infections, loss of sleep from night-time voids, and use of catheters to empty the bladder. For some people, catheterisation can take 20 minutes each time and must be done anywhere from four to more than ten times per day, including several times through the night.
With SpineX therapy, we’re able to reduce incontinence episodes by 70%. And if leaks do happen, they’re smaller. Patients report feeling more in control, they don’t need as many catheters and they can finally sleep through the night.
How does it work? The common thread between all of these conditions is that messages between the brain and the spinal cord don’t get through clearly. SpineX acts like a hearing aid for the spinal cord, amplifying the signals that need to get through while cutting out background noise. We deliver special electrical pulses through the skin to rewire brain patterns and encourage neuroplasticity, producing long-term results.
What’s next? Our team of highly-experienced medtech professionals is excited to bring these technologies to market. We expect to receive FDA approval for and launch the first of our products in late 2024. We will reach our target customers by working directly with our collaborators in the hospitals, rehabilitation centres and physical therapy clinics where they are already being treated so that we can make sure that we reach as many potential users as possible.
We’ve been told by our patients and their families that the impact of our technology
is magical, and we agree.
Join us in our quest to bring this amazing technology to market. We’re launching a financing round, recruiting for clinical trials, and interested in talking to people with lived experience with any of these conditions.
Please reach out to us. We would love to talk to you.
