FROM DISCOVERY TO CLINIC
Restorative Medicine Houston Methodist remains at the cutting edge of regenerative medicine by developing a range of medical and biotherapeutic products that help restore the functionality of impaired organs and tissues. These restorative solutions address challenges, including protecting transplanted tissues from rejection, restoring sensorimotor function in people with neuromuscular disorders and repairing broken bones.
Houston Methodist and Rice University Launch
Center for Translational Neural Prosthetics and Interfaces
Gavin W. Britz, MD
Behnaam Aazhang, PhD
Neurosurgery’s history of
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who also directs
cutting diseases out of
the neuroengineering initiative. “Several core members,
the brain is morphing into
myself included, have existing collaborations with our
a future in which implanting
colleagues at Houston Methodist in the area of neural
technology into the brain
prosthetics. The creation of the Center for Translational
may help restore function,
Neural Prosthetics and Interfaces is an exciting development
movement, cognition and memory after patients suffer strokes, spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders. Rice University and Houston Methodist have forged a partnership to launch the Center for Translational Neural Prosthetics and Interfaces, a collaboration that brings together scientists, clinicians, engineers and surgeons to solve clinical problems with neurorobotics.
toward achieving our common goals.” The physical space for the center’s operation includes more than 25,000 square feet of Rice Neuroengineering Initiative laboratories and experimental spaces in the university’s BioScience Research Collaborative, as well as an extensive build-out underway at Houston Methodist’s West Pavilion location that’s expected to be completed late in 2021.
“This will be an accelerator for discovery. This center will
The Houston Methodist facility will include operating rooms
be a human laboratory where all of us — neurosurgeons,
and a human laboratory where ongoing patient/volunteer
neuroengineers, neurobiologists — can work together to
diagnosis and assessment, device fabrication and testing
solve biomedical problems in the brain and spinal cord.
and education and training opportunities are planned.
And it’s a collaboration that can finally offer some hope and options for the millions of people worldwide who suffer from brain diseases and injuries,” said center Co-Director Gavin W. Britz, MD, Candy and Tom Knudson Distinguished Centennial Chair in Neurosurgery at Houston Methodist. Houston Methodist neurosurgeons, seven engineers from the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative and additional physicians and faculty from both institutions form the center’s core team. The center also plans to hire additional engineers who will have joint appointments at Houston Methodist and Rice. Key focus areas include spinal cord injury, memory and epilepsy studies, and cortical motor/sensation conditions.
“This partnership is a perfect blend of talent,” said Rice’s Marcia O’Malley, PhD, a core member of the new center. “We will be able to design studies to test the efficacy of inventions and therapies and rely on patients and volunteers who want to help us test our ideas. The possibilities are limitless.” Houston Methodist neurobiologist Philip J. Horner, PhD, describes the lab as “a merging of wetware with hardware,” where robotics, computers, electronic arrays and other technology — the hardware — is incorporated into the human brain or spinal cord — the wetware. The centerpiece of this working laboratory is a zero-gravity harness connected
“The Rice Neuroengineering Initiative was formed with
to a walking track with cameras and sensors to record
this type of partnership in mind,” said center Co-Director
feedback, brain activity and other data.
Behnaam Aazhang, PhD, Rice’s J.S. Abercrombie Professor