Synaptive partners with Panaxium

Synaptive Medical Inc., a leader in surgical planning, navigation, and robotic visualization technologies, today announced a joint-development partnership with bioelectronic medicine company Panaxium SAS to incorporate Panaxium’s ultra-flexible iontronic electrocorticography (ECoG) platform into Synaptive’s Modus V robotic exoscope technology.

This novel integration will provide unparalleled real-time intelligence on bioelectrical connections and decisive functional mapping information during procedures to help preserve important brain tissues during resection, reduce procedure duration, and improve post-surgery outcomes for the most life-threatening brain disorders.

“Synaptive is proud to launch this research effort with extraordinary clinical partners advancing state-of-the-art in neurology and neurosurgery at renowned centres worldwide,” said Cameron Piron, President and Co-Founder of Synaptive Medical. “Synaptive already provides automated tractography segmentation for surgical planning with our imaging system, so the integration of Panaxium’s electrocorticography into Modus V is a natural next step for our technology and an exciting leap forward in the neurosurgical space.”

Intra-operative neuromonitoring by stimulating and recording the signal from electrodes placed on the subdural surface of the cortex is a well-established and important technique that has been used by neurosurgeons and neurologists for decades. However, this technique traditionally relies on interpreting the signal from a small number of large electrodes.

Panaxium’s recent development of more sensitive iontronic neural interfaces that exploit organic ion-conducting materials have provided the neuroscience research community with many clinically relevant insights by enabling much higher resolution mapping than conventional systems. When combined with Synaptive’s ability to precision-track the location of these high-resolution bi-directional interfaces with MRI tractography, this innovation unlocks unprecedented real-time intelligence, providing neurosurgeons with decisive functional mapping information to preserve important brain tissues during resection and to reduce time of surgery.

The benefits of this co-development partnership will be demonstrated in an upcoming pilot trial at hospitals in Paris, France, sponsored by INSERM, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research and led by renowned neurologist and researcher Dr Gilles Huberfeld, MD, PhD at the Hôpital Fondation Adolphe de Rothschild and INSERM.

“The ability to build up pathological biomarker maps with micro-resolution electrocorticography over large areas of the cortex is a huge step forward for clinical research,” says Dr Huberfeld. “The alignment of ultra-precise electrophysiological information with a patient’s surgical planning information in real-time makes the Synaptive-Panaxium solution the ultimate neuro-navigation tool for brain surgery.”

Panaxium is also commercializing its iontronic interfaces for use in monitoring and therapeutic neurostimulation applications including tumour resection procedures and stroke recovery treatments including proprietary AI-assisted software for procedures.

“This tool provides a level of electrophysiology information that has never been accessible during procedures before,” said Dr Pierre Leleux, PhD, Panaxium Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer. “The extraordinary and unprecedented data we are collecting then enables software intelligence for an expanding range of procedures that would benefit from cortical mapping, including neuropsychiatric, neuro-oncology, and neurodegenerative.”

Synaptive Medical and Panaxium will both be present at the 2022 Congress of Neurological Surgeons conference from October 10-12, 2022, in San Francisco, California.
MB Bureau