Microchips in the brain to cure diseases

Microchips that can be implanted in the brain, to better understand and treat Parkinson's, epilepsy, Alzheimer's and to control robotic prostheses, exoskeletons and other devices that help to live. Sinaps is the name of this technology that allows you to "listen" to the brain and study its functioning with an accuracy never achieved before and applications in the field of diseases related to the nervous system and the creation of human-machine neural interfaces. It is produced by a new start-up, Corticale srl, an Italian answer to Neuralink, the neurotechnology company of San Francisco founded, among others, by Elon Musk.

Based in Genoa, Corticale has a team made up of the manager Giuseppe Santella (president and CEO) and the three co-founding partners, the robotic engineer Fabio Boi (technological director and cto), the engineer in microtechnology applied to neuroscience Luca Berdondini (scientific consultant) and Gian Nicola Angotzi, the scientific director, 43 years old, raised in Cuglieri, graduated in Electronic Engineering from the University of Cagliari, where he also obtained a PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. In 2008 he moved to Genoa to work at the Italian Institute of Technology (of which the scientific director is Giorgio Metta from Cagliari) within the Brain Machine Interfaces group directed by Professor Luciano Fadiga, and since 2016 he has been a researcher within the group "Microtechnology for Neuroelectronics" directed by Luca Berdondini, where he carried out the development of Sinaps technology together with Fabio Boi, of Sardinian origin but born in Genoa.

The fledgling company started its business thanks to a 2 million euro loan from Giuseppe Santella, an entrepreneur and top manager with a very long standing. The first goal is to bring to the market Sinaps technology (Simultaneous Neural Recording Active Pixel Sensor technology) which provides new opportunities for the study of brain functioning with applications in the diagnostic, therapeutic and pharmacological fields. It will initially target neuroelectronics companies and research centers worldwide and will be available later this year. Subsequently, it will also be accessible to the clinical and hospital sectors.

"We can think of Sinaps as a new way of observing the functioning of the brain that revolutionizes its study, greatly expanding our understanding of this organ which is still partly to be explored", explains Luca Berdondini, head of the IIT Microtechnology for Neuroelectronics team and scientific consultant of Corticale. “It is in fact a technological leap forward that changes the cards and opens up new perspectives by offering us an unprecedented degree of definition of the communication mechanisms between nerve cells. A bit like when we went from analog to digital systems or from cathode ray tube screens to ultra-flat and full HD ones ”.

“In recent years, research in the field of neural interfaces has received great attention, including media, just think of Neuralink, the company founded by Elon Musk who is working precisely in that direction even if sometimes with different objectives from ours. Corticale will in fact focus exclusively on the clinical applications of these tools in order to improve the lives of millions of patients suffering from diseases related to the nervous system ”, comments Fabio Boi, Corticale's technological director. "In the past we met with Musk's company verifying how the neural interfaces developed at the Italian Institute of Technology were not only state-of-the-art but even gave the possibility of being able to listen to the brain in an extremely refined way than today. do the same Neuralink ”, says Gian Nicola Angotzi.

“Corticale is the third start-up born from IIT research in just six months. All three new companies have attracted significant capital and skills and have a focus on life sciences ”, comments Matteo Bonfanti, director of Technology Transfer IIT. “With a total of over 8 million private investments in our technologies, we refer to the first six months of 2021 as the 'golden semester of start-ups' and we have no intention of stopping”.