Deep Brain Provides Stimulating Market

There are signs that the field of deep brain stimulation (DBS) has gained a certain momentum of late: three start-ups raised venture rounds in 2011 and there have been two acquisitions in the space within the past year. DBS enables the giants in cardiac rhythm management – Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, and Boston Scientific –to leverage existing technology platforms from CRM to address a new area once served primarily by drugs, and start-ups can help them by validating new disease targets and increasing procedural accuracy and efficiency. The space is appealing because with a single platform, companies can address several diseases with large populations, such as depression and Alzheimer’s disease. But the opportunities remain far from certain with this highly complex technology.

Medtronic PLC’s Activa implanted deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapy is a technology platform that has created a $400 million business for the company in the treatment of movement disorders – Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, and dystonia. For a decade and a half, since its first European approval in 1993, Medtronic has enjoyed dominance in this product segment; but its hegemony is about to come under attack with the entry of St. Jude Medical Inc., which, having launched its therapy for Parkinson’s disease in Europe in 2009, is now headed for the US, and Boston Scientific Corp., which is in early clinical trials with its own DBS platform for Parkinson’s disease.

These cardiac rhythm management (CRM) device leaders see in deep brain stimulation new growth markets that make use of their...

More from Archive

More from Medtech Insight