Under the direction of Co-Founder and CEO Marc Powell, Reach Neuro is transforming the treatment landscape for chronic stroke patients with its groundbreaking spinal cord stimulation technology. This innovation—designed to restore volitional movement in individuals with long-term motor deficits—offers hope to millions of patients who have plateaued in traditional rehabilitation and face a lack of viable treatment options.
Reach Neuro’s journey began with a shared vision: to restore independence and improve the quality of life for stroke survivors living with chronic motor deficits. Co-Founder Marco Capogrosso’s pioneering work on spinal cord stimulation, which initially focused on lower limb recovery for spinal cord injury patients, laid the scientific groundwork for the company.
“What makes stroke unique is that the damage is in the brain, not the spinal cord,” explained Powell. “The circuits we’re stimulating are intact, making stroke an ideal model for targeted spinal stimulation.” This insight led the team to explore how spinal cord stimulation could be adapted to upper-limb movement for stroke patients.
The potential for significant quality-of-life improvements drove the team’s focus on upper-limb recovery. “Our patients talk about the daily challenges they face living with "one good arm,” and they have been thrilled to regain their independence,” Powell emphasized. This dual focus on scientific innovation and meaningful functional gains became the foundation for Reach Neuro.
The team, including Capogrosso, Peter Gerszten, and Doug Weber, initiated clinical studies at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Powell joined as a postdoctoral researcher to support these early trials, which delivered such promising results that the decision to commercialize the technology was clear.
In November 2021, Powell spun Reach Neuro out of the university to lead it full-time as CEO. Capogrosso, Weber, and Gerszten remain closely involved as the company continues to push the boundaries of stroke rehabilitation technology.
Chronic stroke affects millions of individuals in the United States, leaving approximately 7.5 million people with persistent motor deficits. Each year, an additional 400,000 patients join this population. Despite the significant size of this group, effective long-term treatment options remain scarce.
“The standard of care for post-stroke paralysis is rehabilitation,” Powell explained. “Once therapists and patients can no longer demonstrate improvement to insurance companies—usually after three to six months—rehab ends, and patients are left without effective treatment options.”
Existing alternatives, such as muscle relaxants or vagus nerve stimulation, address symptoms like spasticity or enhance the effects of physical therapy but fall short of restoring movement. “What’s unique about our therapy is that we’re seeing immediate, assistive effects,” Powell noted. “We're restoring patients' ability to perform movements they couldn't do before."
Reach Neuro’s technology employs targeted spinal cord stimulation to amplify weak signals between the brain and motor neurons, enabling patients to regain voluntary movement. Unlike other neurostimulation therapies, which often stimulate motor neurons directly, Reach Neuro’s method focuses on sensory afferents to enhance neural circuit sensitivity.
“The stroke damages the corticospinal tract, weakening the signals from the brain,” Powell explained. “Our stimulation makes motor neurons ‘listen’ more closely to those weaker signals, enabling volitional movement controlled naturally by the patient’s brain.”
The therapy involves a minimally invasive outpatient procedure similar to those performed for chronic pain management. Electrodes are implanted along the cervical spinal cord and are tunneled to the stimulator, which is placed in the lower back. Powell emphasized the simplicity and scalability of the procedure: “This is done about 50,000 times a year in the U.S., usually for pain management, so the infrastructure already exists.”
Reach Neuro has achieved remarkable milestones that underline the promise of its technology and its trajectory toward commercialization. The company has already gathered compelling clinical data from seven participants, demonstrating significant improvements in motor function. This early success laid a solid foundation for further clinical exploration.
Regulatory recognition has been another pivotal step forward. Reach Neuro secured breakthrough device designation from the FDA, highlighting the therapy’s groundbreaking potential. Additionally, the company was selected to participate in the FDA’s new TAP (Total Product Life Cycle Advisory Program).
Looking ahead, Reach Neuro is preparing for its upcoming chronic clinical study, which will involve a fully implanted system and enable participants to take the device home. This study will also integrate a formal patient training protocol alongside stimulation to measure the therapy’s full effect size. In parallel, the company is working on developing its own proprietary platform, designed to optimize stimulation programming and improve scalability for a large stroke population.
These achievements and initiatives are supported by $2 million in venture capital funding and an additional $9 million in non-dilutive funding, including an NIH grant that helped fund the acute clinical study. These resources position Reach Neuro to accelerate its clinical and technological advancements, bringing it closer to transforming stroke rehabilitation for millions of patients.
Each year, over 12 million strokes occur worldwide. Of these, a little over 50% of patients will die, leaving millions of patients to tread the difficult road to recovery.
Neuromodulation has been well-validated for its effectiveness in managing neurological conditions. From chronic pain to movement-related disorders, there is a wealth of validating clinical data supporting the effectiveness of these technologies.
Having historically been used in the management of a limited number of clinical indications, neuromodulation is entering a period of growth as innovative companies introduce new ways to utilize technology to regulate neurological conditions. According to LSI’s Market Analysis and Projections (MAP) database, a global device market sizing database, the global market for neuromodulation technologies is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.9% from 2024 to 2029. We estimate that the global neuromodulation devices market will reach $6.3B by the end of 2025 as the number of patients eligible for these technologies, for both existing indications and new ones like stroke rehabilitation, continues to increase.
Powell has been selected to present at LSI USA ‘25 next March 17-21 in front of hundreds of global medical technology companies. Join us in welcoming Powell to the event in Dana Point, CA, where he will share the latest updates on Reach Neuro’s technology and development.
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