“Innovating Health” Distinguished Speaker Seminar Series – Professor Warren Grill
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Closed-Loop Brain Stimulation
Electrical stimulation of the nervous system is an effective therapy for a range of neurological diseases and disorders including chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, urinary incontinence, epilepsy and deafness. These devices typically operate “open-loop”, and the parameters of stimulation (the dose) are invariant, even in the face of changes in the needs or activity of the patient. I will summarize our work to develop, implement, and evaluate closed-loop deep brain stimulation (DBS; a brain pacemaker) for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. In closed-loop DBS, the parameters of stimulation is adjusted automatically in response to dynamic changes in brain signals. I will describe our efforts to characterize how brain signals very with the symptoms of PD, our initial evaluations of closed-loop DBS in the clinic, and our ongoing efforts to port use and evaluations to the home environment. Finally, I will highlight ongoing work to identify and exploit other potential feedback signals that can enable more informed adjustment of stimulation parameters. Collectively, this results highlights the potential of neural stimulation therapies responsive in real time to the needs of patients
Biography
Warren M. Grill is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. He received the B.S. in biomedical engineering in 1989 from Boston University and the Ph.D. in biomedical engineering in 1995 from Case Western Reserve University.
Professor Grill teaches courses on circuits and instrumentation, bioelectricity, and the fundamentals and applications of electrical stimulation. He received the Capers & Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Teaching and Research at Duke University on 2008 and again in 2018, in 2013 was awarded Outstanding Postdoc Mentor at Duke University, and in 2014 received the Duke University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award.
His research interests are in neural engineering and neuromodulation and include design and testing of electrodes and stimulation techniques, the electrical properties of tissues and cells, and computational neuroscience with applications to restoration of bladder function, treatment of movement disorders with deep brain stimulation, electrical stimulation for treatment of pain, and vagus nerve stimulation for regulation of organ function. He has published over 270 peer-reviewed journal articles and has been awarded 77 US patents.
Grill cofounded NDI Pelvic Health which developed a novel approach to treat overactive bladder and was acquired by Medtronic. He is Co-Founder, Director, and Chief Scientific Officer of NDI Medical, a medical device incubator, Co-Founder, Director, and Chief Scientific Officer of DBI, which is commercializing a novel approach to brain stimulation for neurological disorders, and Chief Scientific Advisor at SPR Therapeutics, developer of a novel PNS treatment demonstrating sustained relief of chronic pain.
Dr. Grill serves as a Consultant to the Neurological Devices Panel of the FDA Medical Devices Advisory Committee, is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Neural Engineering, and is on the editorial boards of Brain Stimulation, Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering, and Neuromodulation.
He was elected as Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2007, Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2011, Fellow of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2022, and Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2023.
He was awarded a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award by NIH-NINDS in 2015, his team was a Phase 1 winner of the NIH SPARC Neuromod Prize in 2022, and he was the inaugural winner of the inaugural NANS Clinical and Basic Science/Engineering Innovator Award in 2023.
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