Very interesting investor release this morning:
Release #:812-147307-em-799290:
BioElectronics Investors: Interesting Article for Our Future
Thursday, December 11, 2014
WEALTH WISDOM
Electrical pulses could replace many traditional medicines
-- New Frontier In Medical Science --
Imagine a world in which health disorders could be treated by an implantable device that “speaks” the electronic language of the body. Signals travelling along the nervous system could be analyzed for abnormalities, and corrected to treat conditions as diverse as arthritis, asthma, diabetes and, perhaps one day, even cancer. It sounds like science fiction but a growing number of scientists believe the concept can work.
This, in turn, is rousing interest from pharmaceuticals companies, alerted to both the opportunities and the risk of disruption from technologies that could one day make many traditional medicines obsolete.
GlaxoSmithKline has been most aggressive so far, setting up a $50 million venture capital fund to “invest in companies that pioneer bioelectronic medicines and technologies." “The nervous system is a fundamental control system in biology,” says Kristoffer Famm, GSK’s head of bioelectronics R&D. “Over the long term we’re betting that this is not going to be just two or three types of treatment, it is going to be a whole new class of therapeutics.”
In some respects, bioelectronics is not as futuristic as it sounds. Scientists and medics have been experimenting with the idea since Australian doctors revived a stillborn baby in a Sydney hospital in 1928 by inserting an electric-charged needle into the heart. This was the genesis of the modern pacemaker that today regulates the heartbeat of four million people around the world. But the new generation of bioelectronics, or “electroceuticals”, would go much further. GSK says it believes the technology “could allow us to address some diseases that have so far been untreatable, and others with greater precision and fewer side effects than with conventional medicines."
GSK has invested in a US company called SetPoint Medical, which is developing a tiny implantable device that stimulates the vagus nerve in the neck with electronic pulses. This is intended to counter the inflammation behind rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease. Clinical trials are under way.
The vagus nerve is a focus of bioelectronic research because of its wide reach around the body. A New Jersey-based company called electroCore is exploring ways to treat conditions ranging from respiratory to gastrointestinal complaints by tapping into this neural superhighway.
While GSK and SetPoint believe implantable devices are necessary to maximize proximity to the nerve during stimulation, electroCore thinks treatments can be delivered through the skin. Its handheld gammaCore device treats migraine headaches using electronic pulses to the neck. Stimulating the vagus nerve helps control glutamate, a substance that has been linked with migraines.
JP Errico, electroCore’s founder and chief executive, says such treatments could in future be downloaded from “virtual pharmacies” and delivered from a smartphone. Regulators are taking bioelectronics seriously. In May, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a device by Inspire Medical Systems that treats sleep apnea by stimulating the airway muscles. A month later, an FDA panel recommended a weight-control device from EnteroMedics that stimulates the vagus nerve to make a person feel full.
Evangelists believe this is just the start. The long-term aim is to decode the blizzard of signals from the body’s millions of neurons to identify and correct malfunctions.
GSK has offered a $1 million prize to the first scientists to create “a miniaturized, fully implantable device that can read, write and block the body’s electrical signals to treat disease."
Some see bioelectronics as a step towards a “human enhancement” revolution in which biology, computing and robotics merge. Breakthroughs in the so-called “brain-computer interface” has already allowed paralyzed people to move mind-controlled robotic arms.
Talk of cyborgs and bionics is likely to breed as much skepticism as excitement in the conservative world of big pharma. But companies such as SetPoint and electroCore insist they are building the evidence to show that bioelectronics has a chance of becoming a new frontier in medical science.
