Neuroscience:Translate backs childhood epilepsy drug and a neurological monitoring system for hospital patients
The Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute has awarded its 2026 Neuroscience:Translate grants to two teams, one pursuing new treatments for a rare form of epilepsy and another working on a neurological monitoring system for hospital patients.
Since 2019, the Neuroscience:Translate awards have supported cross-disciplinary teams developing new devices, diagnostic procedures, software, pharmaceutical therapies and other products that can be brought rapidly to market through new companies or partnerships.
Past grant winners have developed impactful medical technologies, including a vibrating glove to improve sensation and muscle control after a stroke; the “milli-spinner,” a blood clot-busting device to treat heart attacks, stroke, and other clot-related diseases; and virtual reality programs to treat depression, among other bold ideas.
The program, which is administered in partnership with the Stanford Mussallem Center for Biodesign, exists to help researchers bridge the infamous “valley of death” between basic science and clinical reality.
“The goal is to help Stanford neuroscientists realize the full potential of each discovery they make,” said Marion Buckwalter, a professor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford Medicine and a deputy director of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute who serves on the Neuroscience:Translate oversight committee. A key part of the program is the input of industry experts paired with each team, Buckwalter said. “Their mentorship really makes a difference in helping our researchers get their ideas out into the real world.”
A new hope for a rare form of epilepsy
One Neuroscience:Translate project concerns the gene SYNGAP1, which helps ensure proper brain wiring. Kids with mutations in that gene often develop SYNGAP1-related neurodevelopmental disorder (SYNGAP1-NDD), which happens when the mutation causes depression and autism as well as debilitating seizures.
The Synaptopathy Clinic at Stanford Children's Health helps kids with the disorder and their families manage symptoms, but for now there is no treatment that addresses the root cause of the disease, said Juliet Knowles, an assistant professor of neurology and neurological sciences and of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine.
“We have seen first-hand how children with SYNGAP1 neurodevelopmental disorder—and their families—face enormous challenges,” said Knowles, who founded the clinic with Stanford Medicine colleagues Christopher Lee-Messer, a clinical associate professor of pediatric neurology, and Katherine Xiong, a clinical assistant professor of pediatric neurology.
Now, with support from Neuroscience:Translate, Knowles, Lee-Messer, and neuroscientist Ivan Soltesz, the James R. Doty Professor of Neurosurgery and Neurological Science, are working on a solution.
Building on their recent work showing that an already FDA-approved drug restores proper SYNGAP1 function in cells and improves depression and social behavior problems, they’ll first test the drug’s potential for treating seizures in mice with a mutant form of SYNGAP1. If they’re successful, the team hopes to move into clinical trials for kids with SYNGAP-NDD within the next few years.
“We are excited to begin this collaboration between clinicians and neuroscientists, which we hope will lead us to a precision therapeutic that better addresses the challenges faced by children with SYNGAP1-NDD and move us toward clinical trials,” Knowles said. “We are also grateful for the industry mentorship provided by Neuroscience:Translate. Translating discoveries in the lab to changes in real-world clinical practice can be particularly challenging, and our team is eager to learn from the experts.”
A monitor for neurological health
The beeping, squiggling heart-rate monitor is a familiar sight to fans of medical dramas like The Pitt—and that’s because this relatively simple device is truly at the heart of rapid response in emergency medicine. If a patient’s pulse suddenly plummets, an alarm will sound and nurses and doctors can come to the rescue. Even if there isn’t a sudden change, the monitor gives the team a source of hard data to help them make better medical decisions.
But no such system exists for monitoring a patient’s neurological condition—something that Ashwin Ramayya, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Stanford Medicine, and Allison Okamura, the Richard W. Weiland Professor in the School of Engineering and a professor of mechanical engineering, hope to change.
For Ramayya, the motivation stems from his experience as a neurosurgeon. In patients with brain injury, he said, it’s crucial to detect worsening injuries and treat them as quickly as possible to prevent permanent damage. The standard approach is to manually assess how patients respond to various kinds of stimulation, but it often fails. Ramayya recalls one patient who was found unresponsive and turned out to have a large hematoma that demanded immediate attention to prevent a catastrophic outcome.
Experiences like that spurred Ramayya to find better ways to assess a patient’s neurological condition in the hope of treating patients before a neurological deterioration transforms into permanent damage. He teamed up with Allison Okamura, the Richard W. Weiland Professor in the School of Engineering and a professor of mechanical engineering who has extensive experience designing wearable mechanical devices aimed at treating symptoms of stroke and other conditions. Together, the pair came up with a deceptively simple idea: a wrist strap that regularly prods a patient and checks for a reaction—information that can be shared in real time with the clinical team.
Ramayya said the device would be simpler and more cost effective than directly monitoring brain activity with an electroencephalogram (EEGs) and that EEG data is actually harder to interpret than watching to see whether a patient reacts to sensory stimulation, starting with mechanical indentation, that is, something that pushes against the skin.
“There is a great need to develop objective assessments of neurological function,” Remayya said. “We’ll benefit tremendously from the mentorship and community that the Wu Trai Neuroscience:Translate program will provide, and I am excited to work together with Allison and leverage her incredible expertise to develop technology that can help address this need.”
2026 Neuroscience:Translate Projects
Precision treatment of pediatric genetic epilepsy: EEG biomarkers and circuit mechanisms
Juliet Knowles (Neurology & Neurological Sciences)
Chistopher Lee-Messer (Neurology & Neurological Sciences)
Ivan Soltesz (Neurosurgery)
Epilepsy, the tendency of the brain to have spontaneous seizures, affects 1% of all children, costing $4 billion dollars per year in the United States. With increasing availability of genetic testing, there is unprecedented opportunity to diagnose the root cause of epilepsy and develop new, more effective treatments to directly address underlying biological causes (i.e., precision treatment). However, for the vast majority of children with epilepsy, precision treatment is not yet available; treatments remain empirical, symptomatic and ineffective in >30%. We identified a drug that is already approved in the US for the treatment of depression that restores normal genetic function, cognition and social behavior in mice modeling a severe form of childhood-onset epilepsy, intellectual disability and autism, SYNGAP1. We now propose studies to determine whether this drug also reduces seizures and brain circuit abnormalities in SYNGAP1 mice. We will use machine learning approaches to identify a disease signature for SYNGAP1 that can be used to measure disease severity and treatment response with a common test, the electroencephalogram (EEG). At the conclusion of this work, we will submit an IND application (to conduct a clinical trial) to the US Food and Drug Administration. This research will serve as a prototype for future translational projects leveraging the joint expertise of both the neuroscience research community and clinicians working in the pediatric genetic epilepsy clinic at Stanford, to develop precision therapies for children with severe epilepsy.
SEMTANA: Stimulus Evoked Motion Tracking for Automated Neurological Assessment
Ashwin G. Ramayya (Neurosurgery)
Allison Okamura (Mechanical Engineering)
Neurological assessments in hospitalized patients have significant limitations that compromise patient care and hospital operations. Current methods are inaccurate, relying on crude bedside tests that fail to detect subtle neurological changes. These assessments occur infrequently—typically every few hours—creating substantial monitoring gaps. The methods are also insensitive, designed to identify gross deficits while missing early indicators of neurological deterioration. These deficiencies result in delayed recognition of acute neurological events such as stroke, where treatment delays directly correlate with increased morbidity and mortality. The "time is brain" principle emphasizes that each minute of delayed intervention results in irreversible tissue loss and worse patient outcomes. Our proposed technology will perform automatic neurological assessment in hospitalized patients by measuring and analyzing movement trajectories evoked by sensory stimulation.
SEMTANA (Stimulus Evoked Motion Tracking for Automated Neurological Assessment) consists of three distinct components: 1) automated sensory stimulation, 2) motion tracking, and 3) software algorithm for interpretation of stimulus-evoked movement trajectories. Our technology can provide a point-of-care diagnostic monitor and provide automated, objective and a near continuous stream of information about the patient’s neurological function, like continuous heart rate or blood oxygenation monitor. It could become a standard technology that is purchased by hospitals for monitoring neurological function in hospitalized patients.
