Description
Altogen Biosystems developing new innovative high bandwidth brain chips (a brain machine interfaces to connect animals and computers). Our primary goal is to create a brain-machine interface for animals (current research prototypes were developed and successfully tested in rats as an animal model of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, as well as spinal cord injury model). As a disease model, the laboratory rat has contributed enormously to neuroscience research over the years. It has also been a popular animal model for Alzheimer’s disease but its popularity has diminished during the last decade, as techniques for genetic manipulation in rats have lagged behind that of mice.
The company’s focus is on developing a functional interface between the rat brain and computer, that is implanted in the brain through a minimally invasive surgical procedure. A brain chip, also known as a neural implant or a brain-computer interface (BCI), is a type of device that is designed to directly interface with the brain in order to manipulate or record its activity. Brain chips are implanted into the brain through a surgical procedure, and they are intended to demonstrate clinically relevant improve for a range of neurological disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, blindness, and hearing loss.
Our proprietary technology create a communication pathway between the rat brain and computer, allowing electrodes that are embedded in the brain, to detect and record rat neural activity and stimulate specific areas of the brain to induce desired responses. We developed proprietary electroporation technology with high efficiency effect on targeted parts of the rat brain as well as delivery of biomolecules (plasmid DNA and small RNA) into targeted tissue. Electroporation is a physical transfection method that utilizes an electrical pulse to create temporary electropores in cellular membranes enabling cargo molecules to be delivered into cells. Electroporation is an efficient delivery method often used for delivery of foreign nucleic acids into difficult-to-transfect cell lines and primary cell types.