Multisite closed loop DBS for Chronic Pain

Chronic pain affects one out of four Americans and is often refractory to any treatment including medications, injections or surgery. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) involves implanting electrodes in key brain regions and holds promise as a new option for therapy, but we currently lack the technology to reliably achieve long-term pain symptom relief. A “one-size-fits-all” approach of continuous, 24/7 brain stimulation has helped patients with some movement disorders, but the key to reducing pain may be the activation of stimulation only when needed. This is called closed loop stimulation which may help to reduce side effects and keep the brain from adapting to stimulation effects. Further, because we know that an individual’s pain experience is processed by many brain regions and no single target works for all patients, DBS that targets these many regions may serve more patients and pain syndromes then just targeting one or two brain regions. We aim to develop a new brain stimulation device platform using personalized brain targets for hard-to-treat chronic pain and to improve technology that will enable the delivery of stimulation only when pain signals in the brain are high. This device platform provides a form factor and ease of use that addresses needs expressed to our team by previous patients and includes necessary technical capabilities that exceed any existing device. We will then test whether personalized stimulation, possible with this device, leads to reliable symptom relief for chronic pain patients over extended periods of time. Project Number: 1UG3NS146003-01 | Fiscal Year: 2026 | NIH Institute/Center: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) | Principal Investigator: Prasad Shirvalkar (+1 co-PI) | Institution: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, SAN FRANCISCO, CA | Award Amount: $387,647 | Activity Code: UG3 | Study Section: Special Emphasis Panel[ZRG1 NV-J (53)] View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11267165