Onward Medical is betting big on neurostimulation as a tool to improve the quality of life for people with paralysis, said CEO Dave Marver.
Bullish after recent clinical success, Marver spoke about the Swiss-Dutch company’s future plans at the 2024 STAT Summit in Boston, including a device that can better regulate an underactive bladder.
“We’re doing it because it seems to work, and thus far, there’s been a lot of promising early feasibility clinical research,” he said. “We’re going to keep moving everything to the pipeline, doing larger studies and demonstrating the efficacy and safety of these devices as we move towards commercialization.”
Sitting next to Marver on the couch was Sherown Campbell, a patient advocate who participated in a trial of Onward’s non-invasive spinal cord stimulator to boost hand and arm functioning. When combined with rehab therapy, the hand and arm function improved in 72% of participants.
Campbell signed up to participate because after he broke his neck wrestling in 2014, it was complicated for him to perform even the simplest tasks. Prior to his spinal cord injury, he could get ready and leave the house within 15 minutes. Afterward, it took him over an hour to get out the door. He also struggled to regulate his body’s temperature, a common problem for people with paralysis.
After trying Onward’s device, those limits shifted. “I could feel things in my core, I could feel things in my leg, it was a great step in my recovery,” said the Denver resident.
Onward is developing several devices for people with paralysis that target different areas of the body and different functions, such as mobility, blood pressure regulation, and temperature regulation. They recently announced they had implanted a brain-computer interface into someone with the goal of helping them walk again — the third person to receive this implant.
Earlier this year, the FDA designated this system as a “breakthrough device” to help accelerate its development — the fifth consecutive year an Onward device has received this designation. The company’s focus on movement, rather than computer control, will set it apart from competitors in the brain-computer interface field such as Neuralink and Synchron.
Onward hopes to see more success stories in the future — people like Campbell, a former athlete, who has extensively documented his recovery as he gets stronger and more dexterous.
“I’ve always had a goal, since I started walking again, to try to do a ‘14-er’ — a significant mountain hike in Colorado,” he said. “But I’m also getting to an age now where I also have to think about aging with a spinal cord injury. There’s a balance there, and then I am also enjoying life with kids at home.”
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