Can Tibion’s Bionic Leg Rewire Stroke Victims’ Brains?

used in different phases to provide either high power or high speed, depending on input from the foot sensor and other sensors. There’s also a clutch that decouples the motors when a patient needs to swing his leg freely, in preparation for a step forward.

Other companies are working on robotic-assist devices for stroke victims and others with impaired mobility. Berkeley Bionics in Berkeley, CA, is developing a bionic exoskeleton called eLEGS, and Remsberg joined Tibion from Swiss medical device company Hocoma, where he helped build the Lokomat, a $300,000 machine that’s considered the state of the art in locomotion therapy. But Remsberg believes that these competing technologies don’t trigger the same neural rewiring as the Tibion device. “There are all these great technologies, but they basically set the trajectory, so once you press the ‘Go’ button, all you can change is the speed, not the path,” he says. “The neuroplastic effect is not seen, because the patient is not required to do anything. For robotic rehabilitation to deliver on its promise is going to require an intention-based device.”

Remsberg was persuaded to invest and take the CEO role in late 2009 after he saw the early clinical results. “In 25 years of working in this field, I have never seen anything this profound,” he says. The company is working to close a Series B funding round with Claremont Creek and other investors “in the near future,” Remsberg says, and is gearing up to for a 24-patient trial at New York Presbyterian Hospital and a 45-patient trial at a Veterans Administration facility in Gainesville, FL.

If the chronic stroke survivors in those studies show a significant and lasting improvement in their walking gait and balance, it could eventually change the standard of care in stroke rehabilitation, Remsberg says. “The medical community won’t be able to justify treating one stroke survivor with a bionic leg and one without,” he says. “There are not too many of these opportunities in a business career.”

Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/