Highland Instruments, Inc. has been Awarded Additional NIH Funding for Their Opioid Use Disorder Studies.

BOSTON, Nov. 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Highland Instruments (Highland) has recently been awarded additional funding via the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to further their ongoing Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Grant funded studies investigating Electrosonic Stimulation (ESStim™) to treat Opioid Use Disorder (OUD)¹. Phase I trial work was conducted at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Case Western University at Cleveland. Phase I studies successfully completed in the summer of 2022. The work is now advancing to Phase II. The work is funded as part of NIH's Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative®, an aggressive, trans-agency effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis².

Founded by Harvard and MIT researchers, Highland is currently developing Electrosonic Stimulation (ESStim™) to treat OUD. ESStim™ is an improved Noninvasive Brain Stimulation (NIBS) modality that overcomes the limitations of past NIBS methods by combining independently controlled electromagnetic and ultrasonic fields to focus and boost stimulation in targeted brain areas. Past chronic pain studies with ESStim™ have demonstrated significant improvements in pain concurrent with reductions in pain medication use, quality of life, and functional outcome measures. As part of the NIH HEAL Initiative, Highland researchers and their academic collaborators are focused on evaluating ESStim™'s efficacy in reducing opioid use and cravings in OUD patients.

OUD is the leading cause of overdoses due to substance abuse disorders, where death rates have drastically increased, with over 68,000 people in 2020³. The U.S. economic cost of OUD ($471 billion) and fatal opioid overdoses ($550 billion) during 2017 totaled $1,021 billion⁴. OUD is challenging as opioids can lead to physical dependence within a short time (as little as 4-8 weeks) and OUD treatment options are limited.⁵ 

Highland Instruments is a privately held medical device company, founded by researchers trained at Harvard Medical School and MIT. Highland is pioneering the development of ESStim™⁶, an innovative noninvasive brain stimulation technology to treat OUD. ESStim™ has also been successfully implemented for the treatment of chronic pain (including osteoarthritis, lower back pain, and diabetic neuropathic pain) and is also being investigated for the treatment of Parkinson's Disease. Highland previously received 510(k) premarket clearance for the ESStim™ 001, which implements ESStim™ technology.

¹Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44DA049685. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
²https://heal.nih.gov
³https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
⁴https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7015a1.htm
⁵https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4920977/
⁶Electrosonic Stimulation is protected by patents, both issued and pending.

Tim Wagner, PhD, CSO
[email protected]
(617) 504-6031

SOURCE Highland Instruments, Inc.