ONWARD Medical, the medical technology company creating therapies to restore movement, independence, and health in people with spinal cord injury, today announces an important publication in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), highlighting the use of ONWARD’s innovative approach to treating orthostatic hypotension in a patient with MSA-P, a degenerative nervous system disease.
Today's NEJM paper presents a 48 year-old patient suffering from MSA-P, a form of Parkinson’s disease that affects the sympathetic nervous system. Severe orthostatic hypotension (low blood pressure) left this patient bedridden and unable to walk or stand for more than eighteen months. Following implant of a system that stimulates the spinal cord, the patient can now walk more than 250 meters. The NEJM paper includes an animation that describes this new approach and its impact on the patient.
The paper detailed research conducted by NeuroRestore, a collaboration between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), which is co-led by Professor Grégoire Courtine, PhD and Neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch, MD. Professor Courtine and Dr. Bloch co-authored the paper, entitled, “Implanted System for Orthostatic Hypotension in Multiple System Atrophy”.
This implant technique has already been used by ONWARD’s research collaborators at NeuroRestore to treat orthostatic hypotension in people with spinal cord injury (SCI), but this is the first time the approach has been shown to improve the quality of life in a person suffering from a neurodegenerative disease. Both SCI and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s can result in orthostatic hypotension, a condition that results in sharp drops in blood pressure particularly during changes in body position, such as transitioning from lying down to sitting or standing. Because current treatment options are inadequate, this has a significant negative impact on quality of life, as people are forced to lie down to avoid loss of consciousness.
“Professor Courtine and Dr. Bloch have demonstrated a remarkable breakthrough in addressing orthostatic hypotension and enabling the ability to stand and walk again, even in a person with severe Parkinson’s disease,” said Dave Marver, CEO of ONWARD, in a press release. “While ONWARD is working hard to commercialize therapies for the SCI community in 2023, our future pipeline also includes very promising therapies for Parkinson’s and other movement related disorders.”
While ONWARD is currently focused on developing and commercializing therapies for people with spinal cord injury, it expects to use its IP, technology, and other resources to develop similar therapies for people with MSA-P and other forms of Parkinson’s disease. In March 2022, the company announced it had acquired the IP rights to develop and commercialize spinal cord stimulation therapies for Parkinson’s disease from EPFL and CHUV.
