#9 | Brain Implants & ALS Patients

Quote of the Week 💬 

ALS Patient Uses Brain Implant To Control Devices

⌛ The Seven Second Summary: In 2021, Synchron became one of the first companies to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct clinical trials with a brain-computer interface (BCI) device that is designed for permanent use in paralysis patients. Synchron is in the midst of their trial, and CNN interviewed Mark, one of the patients enrolled in the study.

🔬 How It Was Done:

• Synchron’s device is minimally invasive, meaning it does not require open brain surgery to implant in a patient. Instead, a cage of thin-wired mesh is inserted through a blood vessel in a patient’s neck, and the device is threaded up through the body’s veins until it reaches the motor cortex — the part of the brain responsible for body movement.

• The implanted device is equipped with sensors to detect and correlate various electrical brainwave activities with specific commands for movements, such as waving a hand, raising a leg or navigating a device screen.

• Once these brainwave activities are detected and translated, the implanted device transmits the recorded information to other devices to execute its commands on behalf of the patient.

🧮 Key Results: Mark is only the 10th patient in the world implanted with Synchron's BCI device, and he is currently working with an occupational therapist to execute several tasks and commands required for day-to-day living. For example, he can already use the device to send health notifications and pain reports to his provider, but he is still learning how to send text messages, control smart home devices and navigate various phone and computer apps.

💡 Why This May Matter: Developments in BCI technologies are encouraging to see because it demonstrates brain signals and brain data that control the body can also be used to control connected devices and machines. These advancements can expand the types of interactions patients have with their environment and potentially improve the quality of life for people who have neurological injuries or disorders without known cures for their conditions.

🔎 Elements To Consider: The technology is still in its early stages, and the primary goals of Synchron's ongoing trial is to assess the safety and efficacy of its device in order to make better versions in the future. Meanwhile, far more details and results from human trials will need to be understood over the next several years before BCI devices are available in standard patient settings.

📚 Learn More: CNN.

Stat of the Week 📊 

Patient On Track For Remission With Both Leukemia And HIV

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⌛ The Seven Second Summary: Scientists from the City of Hope announced one of their patients achieved remission for both acute myelogenous leukemia and is on track for HIV remission after undergoing a reduced-intensity chemotherapy transplant regimen, followed by a blood stem cell transplant with donor cells.

🔬 How It Was Done:

• A series of lower intensity chemotherapy treatments were first administered to the patient in order to suppress their leukemia cells and create space in their bone marrow for the transplanted stem cells to grow and establish a new, healthy immune system.

• The blood used for the stem cell transplant came from a donor who was a perfect match for the patient. The donor had a rare genetic mutation known as homozygous CCR5 Delta 32. People with this genetic mutation are resistant to acquiring HIV because a specific protein receptor on their immune cells are blocked, making it difficult for the virus to enter and infect cells.

🧮 Key Results:

• The patient underwent this treatment strategy in 2019 and is now considered to be cured of their leukemia after 5 years of no cancer signs or symptoms.

• The patient stopped taking therapy treatments for their HIV nearly 3 years ago and will be considered cured of HIV if they remain off their therapy treatment for 5 years and have no HIV signs or symptoms.

• According to City of Hope, this patient became just the fifth person in the world to achieve remission for both acute myelogenous leukemia and HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant.

💡 Why This May Matter: The patient mentioned in this report is 68 years old and lived with HIV for 31 years. They are also the oldest among the five patients who have been cured of their diseases using this treatment methodology. This indicates the research team’s strategy to cure patients with this pair of diseases is robust and tolerable for both elderly and younger individuals.

🔎 Elements To Consider: Further research is still needed to determine if this treatment strategy is effective and well tolerated by a significant percentage of the elderly population, or if this particular patient happened to be a unique exception.

📚 Learn More: City of Hope. NEJM.

AI x Science 🤖

AI Reveals Two Distinct Prostate Cancer Groups To Researchers

An international consortium of researchers released findings from a study where they used AI to classify prostate cancer into two distinct subtypes of the disease.

To accomplish this feat, the researchers sequenced the genome of 159 different patients with prostate cancer. Then, they trained an AI system on this dataset to identify genomic characteristics associated with prostate cancer. Afterwards, they used different clustering techniques to map the different genomic characteristics the AI identified to reveal patterns, relationships, and subtypes of their genomic dataset. This clustering exercise ultimately allowed the researchers to identify two distinct groups of cancers affecting the prostates of these patients in different ways. After gaining this insight, the researchers designed a model to generate an evolutionary tree to illustrate how these two subtypes of prostate cancer might have developed and converged into distinct disease over time.

The results from this study appear to be significant because it reveals an evolutionary trajectory in prostate cancer, where the disease develops in distinct ways based on a person’s genomic characteristics. This is yet another demonstration of how AI systems can be utilized to advance our understanding of complex diseases and inform hyper personalized medical care in the future. UEA. Cell Genomics.

Our Full AI Index

• Research: Researchers from Google Deepmind released Genie, a foundational model trained from Internet videos to generate playable 2D world environments from synthetic images, photographs and sketches. This announcement may indicate the beginnings of a new use case, where users prompt a model to generate a video game. Google Deepmind. arXiv.

• Open Source: Researchers from the University of Basel developed an AI system called WDM to generate medical images from CT or MR scans. arXiv. Github.

• Business: Microsoft announced entering an exclusive partnership agreement with its Azure cloud services and Minstral AI, a French company developing large language models. During the same week, Mistral Large was released, the company’s most advanced language model yet. Microsoft. 

Other Observations 📰

Drug Limits Dangerous Reactions To Allergy-Triggering Foods

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved omalizumab, the first medication to reduce allergic reactions caused by accidental exposure to food triggers two weeks ago. Last week, the study results that led to the administration’s approval were released, and it is now clear why the FDA made its decision.

John Hopkins and Stanford scientists led a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 177 children and 3 adults. All participants in the study had confirmed allergies to peanuts and at least two of the following common foods: milk, eggs, cashews, wheat, walnuts or hazelnuts. 67% of the participants were randomly assigned to receive omalizumab and 33% received a placebo. The treatments were given once every 2 - 4 weeks over the course of 16 weeks, and participants were re-tested between weeks 16 - 20 to see how much of each allergy-triggering food they could safely tolerate.

Upon re-testing, 67% of participants (79 people) who received omalizumab could tolerate at least 600 mg of peanut protein without experiencing a moderate or severe allergic reaction. In contrast, only 7% of participants (4 people) who received the placebo could do the same. The researchers also observed similar results for participants who were tested on their tolerance for milk, egg, cashew, wheat, walnut and hazelnut. Furthermore, 80% of patients taking omalizumab were able to consume small amounts of at least one allergy-triggering food without experiencing any allergenic reaction, 69% of patients could consume small amounts of two allergenic foods without experiencing an allergenic reaction and 47% could eat small amounts of all three allergenic foods without experiencing any allergenic reaction.

These results are both statistically significant and clinically meaningful for people with severe food allergies. This drug will now provide millions of patients with a legitimate treatment option aside from taking extreme precautionary measures and emergency interventions to manage their food allergies. Stanford. NIH. NEJM.

Our Full Science Index

• Energy: BloombergNEF released their 2024 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, and the report found $303.3 billion USD was deployed in 2023 for clean energy technologies. Furthermore, the report found the country’s year-over-year EV sales and CO₂ emissions increased by 50% and decreased by 1.8%, respectively. BNEF.

• Alzheimer’s: Researchers from University College London and the University of Cambridge published a study where they used virtual reality (VR) technology to assess the spatial navigation skills of 100 asymptomatic midlife adults and identify signs of early onset Alzheimer’s. They discover people at a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s, regardless of other risk factors, were selectively impaired with VR navigation, even though they did not have a corresponding impairment with other cognitive tests. UCL. Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

• Policy: The European Parliament adopted a law to restore 20% of the region’s land and sea. Under the law, countries must restore at least 30% of habitats in poor condition by 2030, 60% by 2040, and 90% by 2050. European Parliament.

• Public Health: Mozambique's 2023 Demographic and Health Survey highlights child mortality in the country is down nearly 40% since 2011, declining from 97 to 60 per 1,000 live births. Furthermore, maternal mortality has improved 4x in the last 20 years in the country, declining from 532 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2000 to 127 in 2020. WHO.

Media of the Week 📸 

AI Uses Voice Tracks To Turn Still Images Into Lip Sync Videos

Researchers from Alibaba shared a paper highlighting an AI model they built to generate realistic talking and singing videos from any image or audio. This wizardry reminds us of the Harry Potter portraits who were talking and singing in Hogwarts. Anyone else? Github. arXiv.

JWST Finds Evidence Of Neutron Star In Nearby Supernova

In February 1987, a supernova explosion occurred 160,000 light-years away from Earth. The event was so bright and explosive it remained visible for about a month to the naked eye. Last week, the James Webb Space Telescope captured images containing the best evidence yet that the supernova event released the youngest known neutron star in the universe. NASA. Science.

This Week In The Cosmos 🪐

March 10: A new moon. The best time to stargaze!