Titre:
Subarachnoid Pharmacodialysis Implant for cerebral cortical disorders
Conférencier:
Dr. Nandor Ludvig, MD, PhD ,
Dept of Neurology, NYU, Langone Medical Center, NY, Epilepsy Center, New York, USA
Lieu:
École Polytechnique de Montréal, Pavillon principal, B-401 ,
Date et heure:
mercredi le 05 février 2014 de
09:00 à 12:00
Résumé: Since most neurological and psychiatric disorders with cerebral cortical pathology cannot be treated effectively with mainstream medical treatments, in the last fifteen years investigators have started to develop intracranial drug delivery implants to overcome the inherent problems of systemic pharmacotherapy and traditional neurosurgery. The Subarachnoid Pharmacodialysis Implant (SPI) is a result of this effort. The SPI, based on US patent No. 6,497,699 and patent application No. 20120053506, is implantable in the cranium to transmeningeally deliver drugs and drain (“dialyze”) neurotoxic molecules exclusively in the diseased cortical areas. The device performs this site-specific dual function via a subarachnoid fluid-exchange sheet that incorporates sealed fluid-exchange ports, as well as EEG electrodes to provide feedback data for optimizing treatment parameters. This seminar will (a) reiterate the rationale of this technology, (b) outline the hardware and software of the implant, (c) present long-term safety and antiepileptic efficacy data from freely behaving nonhuman primates, as published in Ludvig et al., J. Neurosurg., 2012, 117:162-175, (d) mention a limited clinical study on the relevance to humans, and (e) be concluded with an outlook to the future, with the vision of adapting SPI-like implants for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, cortical strokes and malignant tumors.
Note biographique:
Dr. Nandor Ludvig received both his MD and PhD degree in Europe: the MD from the University of Pecs Medical School, Hungary in 1979; the PhD from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1994. Since 1985 he has been working as a medical scientist in the United States, appointed at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center as an Associate Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology when he got his first NIH grant in 1997. Since then he has received 6 grants from NIH and 2 from NSF. Dr. Ludvig was the first to show that single cell recording and microdialysis can be done in the brain of freely-moving monkeys, demonstrating with this technique the existence of place cells in the primate hippocampus and the ability of manipulating the firing of hippocampal and neocortical neurons with localized drug delivery for months. It was this integrated neuroscience research that inspired him to invent the hybrid neuroprosthesis: an implantable device comprising both electrophysiological and pharmacological components for the treatment of brain disorders, which he patented in 2002. He went on to improve on this device documented in about 20 publications in scientific journals, books and pending patents partly supported with a grant from the Epilepsy Research Foundation. From 2004 through 2011 Dr. Ludvig worked on his invention as a Research Associate Professor of Neurology at the New York University School of Medicine. Currently he is focusing on raising funds to complete this device so that it can be ready for clinical trials. He is one of the contributors to the new textbook by Elsevier on medical implants.