31 January 2025
Exploring new frontiers in neurotech
Precision Neurotechnologies Programme Director, Jacques Carolan, discusses how his programme is developing.
With £69m in funding over four years, the Precision Neurotechnologies programme is supporting 19 Creator teams to develop new ways of interfacing with the human brain at the circuit level and design next-generation technologies informed by clinicians' and patients' lived experiences.
Their goal is to understand, identify, and treat many of the most complex neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, from Alzheimer’s and epilepsy to depression.
We sat down with Programme Director, Jacques, to talk about building the programme and project selection, the importance of a coordinated effort in this space, and why a patient-centred approach is critical to the programme’s success.
You've chosen to fund 19 Creator teams across a broad spectrum of approaches and disciplines. How have you optimised this group, and where have you placed your bets for success?
We intentionally kept the scope of the programme broad. Rather than specifying the types of technologies we wanted to fund, we said: “we know what these technologies need to do, now give us your best ideas.” That is a key part of being a Programme Director – you need to leave space to be surprised. But the key question on my mind was always: given how broad the scope is, how do we find synergies between our teams? A ‘programme’ is a mechanism where something magical happens that can’t happen from funding teams in isolation. What was so exciting was that as we reviewed the strongest proposals, we saw technology themes emerge: non-invasive interfaces, remote interfaces and biological interfaces. These now make up our programme areas.
Creator Spotlight: Biological Approaches
Rylie Green's team at Imperial College London is developing RESCUE, a new class of biohybrid neurotechnology that will harness the synergy between biology and hardware to enable the engineering of neural circuits in vivo via neuromodulation.
Why is a coordinated programme necessary for developing these technologies?
It's really about maximising impact. When you coordinate these efforts, you can develop technologies that address a much broader range of diseases and really capitalise on the natural synergies between teams. We've given ourselves the freedom to explore these connections while staying focused on our core objectives. The magic happens in those overlaps between different approaches.
How has your experience of research in this field influenced your approach?
The ARIA model has been absolutely crucial here. When you're evaluating projects and setting milestones, having knowledge across multiple fields turns out to be incredibly valuable. It helps you recognise what's truly novel and what's actually feasible. But what's really struck me, as a practicing scientist myself, is how receptive teams are when their funder can engage with them at a technical level. There's something really powerful about being able to sit down together and work through plans in detail. It builds a different kind of trust.
Creator spotlight: Remote Interfacing Technologies
At University College London, Gabriele Lignani's team is working to reverse dysfunctional brain circuits towards a stable physiological ‘ground state’ that’s more resilient to minor perturbations that trigger paroxysmal activity. The team’s vision is to focus on applications for epilepsy, schizophrenia and dementia.
This programme will include ARIA's first ever clinical trial, with the team having found each other through ARIA's teaming tool. Why is nucleating a community and fostering collaboration so important for this programme?
Here's the thing about solving problems in this space, it's incredibly complex because you need such diverse expertise. You're not just talking about one discipline; you need clinicians, hardware engineers, bioengineers – really the whole spectrum of different specialists working together. That's been a historical challenge, not just from a technical perspective, but from a funding one too. Traditional funding mechanisms often struggle to support these kinds of diverse collaborations.
What's been really exciting is seeing how our teaming platform has already proven its value. Two of the teams we ended up funding actually met through the platform – that's exactly the kind of connection we were hoping to facilitate, bringing people together to spark something new.
Creator spotlight: Non-Invasive Technologies
The Brain Mesh project, led by Jacob T. Robinson of Rice University and Motif Neurotech, is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between multiple labs in the US and UK. They're building a scalable system for brain state monitoring and modulation across entire neural circuits, designed explicitly for human translation, which will pave the way for more radically more comprehensive neuromodulation.
You're funding multiple projects that will gather insights from clinicians and people with lived experiences of brain disorders. Can you expand on why this is so important?
Patient-centred design is critical in any medical technology or therapeutic development. If you're building technology for someone, you absolutely need to understand what they actually want and need. It's not just an ethical consideration – though that's certainly important – it's about creating something that will actually make a difference in people's lives.
We've seen time and time again that understanding potential adoption barriers early in the development process can make or break a technology's success. If we develop something brilliant but people don't want to use it, or clinicians find it impractical in real-world settings, we haven't really succeeded, have we? Understanding ethical considerations, user needs and potential adoption barriers early in the development process is crucial for success.
Creator spotlight: Future Adoption
Martyn Pickersgill's project at the University of Edinburgh project has three aims: to discover how neurologists have experienced – and consider that they might experience – neurotechnological innovation; to understand clinical perspectives and how they relate to expectations and framings of novelty in discourse on novel tech; and generate actionable insights into the barriers and facilitators of the adoption of precision neurotech.
Which outputs are you excited to see from teams over the next 12 months?
There's so much to look forward to! I'm particularly excited about seeing the first prototypes and initial data coming out of our teams. While four years isn't a long time in this space – and believe me, we know that – our teams are moving incredibly quickly.
One area I'm especially keen to watch is the development of biological interfaces. There's fascinating work happening around growing neurons that can be implanted into brains, either to repair damaged pathways or as an interface to the outside world. The really intriguing thing about this approach is that because it's biological, you can leverage the tools of molecular and cellular biology to, for example, increase biocompatibility and potentially prevent rejection. That could be a game-changer if it works out.
But really, every team has something exciting in the pipeline. These early signs of the technology coming together in the first year. That's what keeps us all motivated.