Capogrosso Awarded $8 Million NIH Grant

Marco CapogrossoPittsburgh, September 29, 2022 -- Marco Capogrosso, PhD, assistant professor with the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurological Surgery and director of the university's Spinal Cord Stimulation Laboratory, was awarded a five-year, $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechologies® (BRAIN) Initiative to design and test a system for the electrical neurostimulation of the cervical spinal cord to reduce arm and hand motor impairments in people with severe stroke. 

In collaboration with co-principal investigator Douglas Weber, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and colleagues from Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities, as well as Germany-based neurotech company CorTec GmbH, the Pitt team will develop and test a fully implantable spinal cord neurostimulation system that could be used to control electrical stimulation patterns in real time. 

Peter Gerszten, MD, MPH, the Peter E. Sheptak Professor of Neurological Surgery in the department, is a co-investigator of the study. Dr. Gerszten and Dr. Capogrosso previously developed the technique for successfully implanting similar spinal cord stimulation devices into stroke patients as part of a pilot study. Dr Gerszten will be implanting the devices as part of this new NIH-funded clinical investigation.

The device developed by CorTec will be designed to specifically target the cervical spinal cord and used to determine stimulation parameters that improve strength and motor control of the arm and hand in patients experiencing hemiparesis, or partial inability to move one’s limb after severe stroke. 

The researchers seek to obtain regulatory approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use the device in clinical rehabilitation settings and to test its efficacy to improve motor control in combination with physical training.

This project follows Dr. Capogrosso’s work on spinal cord stimulation showing that electrical stimulation improves arm control in paralyzed monkeys. The Pitt research team  is now working to enroll participants in a clinical trial testing spinal cord stimulation to restore arm movement in people with stroke