Neurostimulation and Targeted Treatment Delivery in Epilepsy Care: Martha Morrell, MD

WATCH TIME: 5 minutes

“It's wonderful that there are innovative study designs being applied to treatments like epilepsy. We need to get treatments to patients as soon as possible, while providing the FDA with the necessary data to determine safety and effectiveness. With data like from the RNS System, along with analytic techniques emerging from AI, and the understanding that biomarkers or proxies of a patient's well-being could be as efficient and informative as traditional methods."

In recent decades, neurostimulation has advanced the treatment landscape of epilepsy, opening a new world of options for patients with seizures. One of the biggest advantages of neurostimulation over pharmacological treatments for patients is the modulation of the epilepsy network by delivering stimuli at a specific target or the “hub.”¹ There are now different neurostimulation modalities available to treat focal epilepsy when surgery is not an option such asNeuroPace’s Responsive Neurostimulation System (RNS), a closed-loop technology that monitors and responds to a patient’s unique brain patterns to deliver therapy in real time prior to symptom onset.²

According to a recent announcement, NeuroPace and Rapport are strategically collaborating to leverage the company’s RNS System, an FDA-approved treatment for medical refractory epilepsy and evaluate biomarker changes in currently implanted RNS System patients that have enrolled in a phase 2a proof-of-concept study assessing Rapport’s treatment candidate, RAP-219. By agreement, NeuroPace announced that the company will share data and insights about these patients which will be used by Rapport to help them evaluate the impact of RAP-219 on certain biomarkers of patients with focal onset seizures.

Recently, Martha Morrell, MD, clinical professor of neurology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and chief medical officer at NeuroPace, sat down in an interview with NeurologyLive® to discuss how NeuroPace's RNS System will leverage big data to personalize epilepsy treatments, and the insights that have emerged from the accumulated data. She also talked about the role that artificial intelligence plays in the collaboration between NeuroPace and Rapport, and how it contributes to the advancement of therapies for focal epilepsy. In addition, Morrell spoke about the ways that the partnership between NeuroPace and Rapport signifies a shift in study designs for epilepsy treatments, and how it addresses the challenges of traditional methods.

REFERENCES
1. Lin Y, Wang Y. Neurostimulation as a promising epilepsy therapy. Epilepsia Open. 2017;2(4):371-387. Published 2017 Aug 23. doi:10.1002/epi4.12070
2. Skrehot HC, Englot DJ, Haneef Z. Neuro-stimulation in focal epilepsy: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Epilepsy Behav. 2023;142:109182. doi:10.1016/j.yebeh.2023.109182
3. NeuroPace to Leverage the Power of its RNS System’s Novel Data Collection, Brain Monitoring and Analysis Capabilities in Groundbreaking Collaboration. News Release. Published December 4, 2023. Accessed December 14, 2023. https://www.neuropace.com/press-release/neuropace-to-leverage-power-of-rns-system-in-collaboration/