2022 Business Start-Up Award winner: Ceryx Medical
Ceryx Medical receives a Business Start-Up Award for developing a unique bioelectronic technology that could change the way diseases such as heart failure are treated by reinstating natural communication between the heart and lungs.
Heart failure happens when the heart can no longer supply all the blood the body needs. This situation results from damage to the heart that can occur following a heart attack, an infection or chronic hypertension. Once a patient has heart failure, it is extremely difficult to prevent the disease from progressing.
Current heart failure treatment is limited, confined to the prevention and control of symptoms, preventing mortality, and in the early stages, attempting to prevent or slow cardiac remodelling. Clinicians are challenged by a disease in which they must attempt to maximise cardiac performance to minimise heart failure symptoms, while simultaneously reducing stress on a damaged heart.
In a healthy body, the heart and the lungs are linked, their function is coordinated to maximise performance. The heart and lungs receive multiple inputs that influence their function; for example, stress, both physical and emotional, stimulates an increase in heart rate and respiration. Both organs are continuously responding to the needs of the body. Despite these constant demands, communication between the organs is maintained such that the two work together to maximise cardiorespiratory efficiency. In diseases such as heart failure, this communication between the heart and lungs is disrupted, thus reducing their performance. Ceryx can restore the natural patterns of communication between the heart and lungs, improve cardiac function and bring significant therapeutic benefit to patients with cardiac diseases such as heart failure.
Ceryx Medical has developed a technology that mimics cell membranes, ion channels and action potentials using analogue circuitry, enabling the system to interpret signals directly with the body in real-time and generate realistic, biological output signals. These artificial neurons are then combined into neural networks that mimic neural structures called central pattern generators, which the body uses to control processes ranging from walking to swallowing to breathing.
About the company
Ceryx Medical is a biomedical company that develops bioelectronic therapeutic devices for treating diseases such as heart failure and other neurological disorders. These bioelectronic devices help restore the lost physiological functions within the body. This approach allows revolutionary therapies with no side effects to be employed.