Four Rice University research groups are part of an inaugural cohort of 18 projects funded by the Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) ⎯ a United Kingdom government agency inspired by the United States’ Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ⎯ to unlock cutting-edge brain-interfacing technologies.
Neurological conditions are the leading cause of illness and disability worldwide with more than 1 in 3 people impacted, according to the World Health Organization. The economic burden of neurological disorders in the U.K. is roughly $5.4 billion, and in the U.S. some estimates run as high as $800 billion annually.
To address these challenges, ARIA announced today the launch of its Precision Neurotechnologies program, led by program director Jacques Carolan, with $84.2 million over four years in funding for projects that “explore and unlock new methods to interface with the human brain at the circuit level.”
Three of the four awardee labs at Rice are part of a team that has won approximately $5.9 million for the development of Brain Mesh, a distributed network of minimally invasive implants to stimulate neural circuits with cell-type precision and stream neural data in real time. The project is led by Motif Neurotech, a U.S. startup based in Houston that was spun out of the Rice lab of Jacob Robinson and will be developed in collaboration with U.K.-based startup MintNeuro.
Robinson, a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering and founder and CEO of Motif, will lead system and network integration and encapsulation efforts for Mesh Points, implants about the size of a grain of rice that work in concert to track and modulate brain states. Designed to be embedded in the skull above the dura ⎯ the protective membrane that envelops neural tissue ⎯ the millimeter-sized nodes entail relatively simple, low-risk surgery.
Robinson said the greater vision behind the research is the ability to address mental health conditions with tools better suited to the underlying physiology. Mental, emotional and cognitive experiences are reflected at the level of the brain in patterns and rhythms of activation and latency. In diseased states, disruptions in these patterns are currently managed with medications that impact the whole brain and often other parts of the body as well. Meanwhile, existing implantable neuromodulation devices typically target only a small part of the brain and require complex surgical procedures.
“Current neurotechnologies are limited in scale, specificity and compatibility with human use,” Robinson said. “The Brain Mesh will be a precise, scalable system for brain-state monitoring and modulation across entire neural circuits designed explicitly for human translation. Our team brings together a key set of capabilities and the expertise to not only work through the technical and scientific challenges but also to steward this technology into clinical trials and beyond.”
In order to demonstrate the potential of the Brain Mesh for human use, a critical step is its validation in nonhuman primate experimental models. This part of the project will be carried out in the lab of Valentin Dragoi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, the Rosemary and Daniel J. Harrison III Presidential Distinguished Chair in Neuroprosthetics at Houston Methodist and professor of neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Dragoi’s contribution will involve the deployment of a technique that combines optogenetics ⎯ neurons engineered to be responsive to light ⎯ with electrophysiological recordings in order to assess the ability of the Brain Mesh platform to selectively engage targeted neuron populations.
“It is deeply motivating to be a part of this team, and I am thrilled with the opportunity to have our work inform neurotechnology that could someday revolutionize brain health,” said Dragoi, who also serves as scientific director of the Center for Neural Systems Restoration, a collaboration between Rice and Houston Methodist established to foster neuroscience research and medical treatment innovation by bringing together scientists, clinicians, engineers and surgeons to tackle complex brain-related medical challenges.
Kaiyuan Yang, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering who leads the Secure and Intelligent Micro-Systems Lab at Rice, will work on power and data pipeline development to enable the functional miniaturization of the Mesh Points. Informed by Yang’s expertise in ultralow-power and miniaturized integrated circuits and microsystems, the array of miniature implants will be equipped with wireless power and data transfer capabilities with each implant containing three “chiplets” for power, recording and stimulation.
“Working on the computing side of this innovative brain-computer interface project is a fantastic opportunity to showcase and advance our creative approaches to rethinking efficient, reliable and scalable microsystems for bioelectronics,” Yang said.
Rice bioengineer Jerzy Szablowski will contribute to the efforts of a different team of the 18 selected for funding through ARIA’s Precision Neurotechnologies program. Szablowski, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice who leads the Laboratory for Noninvasive Neuroengineering, specializes in noninvasive brain circuit monitoring and control via synthetic serum markers, gene-delivery vectors and site-specific therapeutics. Together with collaborators at three universities and two industry partners, he will work on developing closed-loop, self-regulating gene therapy for dysfunctional brain circuits. The team is backed by an award of approximately $2.3 million.
“Our goal is to develop a method for returning neural circuits involved in neuropsychiatric illnesses such as epilepsy, schizophrenia, dementia, etc. to normal function and maybe even make them more resilient,” Szablowski said.
Created by an Act of the U.K. Parliament and sponsored by the U.K. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, ARIA is an independent, high-risk/high-reward research body that seeks to drive transformational scientific and technological advancements.
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- About ARIA:
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ARIA is a research and development funding agency in the U.K. created to unlock technological breakthroughs that benefit everyone. Created by an Act of Parliament and sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, it funds teams of scientists and engineers to pursue research at the edge of what is scientifically and technologically possible.
- About Rice:
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Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Texas, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of architecture, business, continuing studies, engineering and computing, humanities, music, natural sciences and social sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. Internationally, the university maintains the Rice Global Paris Center, a hub for innovative collaboration, research and inspired teaching located in the heart of Paris. With 4,776 undergraduates and 4,104 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 7 for best-run colleges by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by the Wall Street Journal and is included on Forbes’ exclusive list of “New Ivies.”