The National Institutes of Health, through its Medical technology blueprint program, has established two incubation centers and launched a funding request in support of commercially viable, clinically focused neurotechnology solutions to diagnose and treat nervous system disorders. Blueprint MedTech is built on the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research collaborative framework, which includes the NIH Office of the Director and 12 NIH institutes and centers that support research on the nervous system.
“We want to help fill a gap for developers whose technologies address diseases of the nervous system: a gap between knowing that the science is mature enough and having an approved device that will help people,” said Michael Wolfson, Ph.D., program director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and the Blueprint MedTech program. “We offer a different way to fund technology development based on lessons learned from the Diagnostics Rapid Acceleration initiative and other innovative NIH programs.” He noted that this sector of technological development has indicated that it is ready for innovations in areas such as stroke, epilepsy, pain, cognitive impairment, nerve and brain injuries, motor impairment, as well as mental health, vision, sleep and neonatal conditions.
Two incubation centers for the program: the Center for the Advancement of Innovative Neurotechnology (TAPE) and NeuroTech Port (NTH), successfully competed to become technological accelerators of the program. CINTA is a component of the Consortium for Improving Medicine with Innovation and Technology (CIMIT), a network of academic and medical institutions, based in Boston. NTH is a collaboration between scientists, engineers and physicians at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and Howard University, Washington, DC.
CINTA and NTH have launched a financing opportunity on behalf of the NIH program. This program will catalyze the translation of new neurotechnologies from early stage development to first-in-human clinical studies. The funding would cover up to $500,000 in direct costs per year for up to four years. In addition to funding, selected teams will receive ongoing, specialized support from mentors with experience in the commercialization of neurotechnological devices. CINTA and NTH will choose up to eight teams, with two annual selection cycles. The program seeks to increase participation of applicants from minorities and underrepresented groups, including women, Black, Latino X, and communities of color. The call for requests for pre-proposals will be open between September 27 and October 24, 2022. Following review of pre-proposals, a subset of applicants will be invited to submit a full proposal.
This program is supported by NIH grants U54EB033650 to CINTA and U54EB033664 to NTH.
About Blueprint MedTech: Blueprint MedTech is an NIH incubator that aims to address the challenges innovators face in the process of developing cutting-edge medical devices to diagnose and/or treat nervous system disorders. It is a constituent program of the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, a cooperative effort between the NIH Office of the Director and 12 of the NIH institutes and centers that support nervous system research. By pooling resources and expertise, Blueprint supports transformative neuroscience research and the development of new tools, training opportunities, and other resources to assist neuroscientists.
