Episode description
Thomas Oxley is a neurosurgeon who is also the founder of Synchron which makes the Stentrode. Instead of requiring invasive brain surgery for implantable neural devices, they are able to use stents such as those used in cardiology to collect neural signals
Top 3 Takeaways:
- Stentrode implantation it's one of the simplest stent procedures.
- Got a $40 million Series B funding round from Khosla Ventures thanks to the success of in-human studies as well as the potential to piggyback off of existing hospital technologies
- "We see an avenue for a range of products that do not require open brain surgery that reaches all regions of the brain, that can take information out, that can take information in that are fully implanted, that is easy to put in, and that should open up a new industry to solve problems that haven't otherwise been able to be solved."
2:00 "Do you want to describe the technology?"
5:15 "What is the level of skill required for an implant of a stent?"
6:45 "How did you come up with this technology?"
9:00 "You cold-called DARPA to get funding?"
12:15 "Our device is meant to be encapsulated and so it is a benefit for us, so how did that work?"
15:00 "And then you guys got a breakthrough status in August. Do you want to describe what this is and what that meant for you guys and how you got it?"
16:00 "I'm assuming this potentially helped with the round of funding for Silicon Valley the Khosla Ventures round that you got, do you want to talk a little bit about this?"
20:00 "I have some questions about these first patients. It was done in Australia. Is there a difference or how does that work?"
22:00 "What are the plans for the future?"
25:45 "Do you have any ideas of how to be able to [have payers cover costs]?"
27:30 "We met each other at the bioelectronic medicine forum. Is this something that you've thought about?"
28:45 "I read that you guys have 60 patents. Is that true? And why so many?"
Eddie Chang's paper?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.714256/full