Neuros Medical: Relieving Pain and Restoring Lives

When David Veino talks about Neuros Medical's technology, the excitement in his voice is unmistakable. After 30 years in the medical device industry focused on cardiovascular and peripheral vascular innovations, he's now leading a company with a solution for a patient population that has long been overlooked: amputees suffering from chronic pain.

"There are 2 million lower limb amputees in this country today, and 80% of them will have chronic post-amputation pain," Veino explains. "Plus another 120,000 major lower limb amputations every year. When you start to think about how large that population is, and how difficult it is to treat them, it's overwhelming."

The problem is as devastating as it is widespread. After amputation, severed nerves become "angry" and "hyper-excitable," sending constant pain signals to the brain. This leads to what Veino describes as "phantom pain, opioid addiction, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and suicidality" – with few effective treatment options available.

Neuros Medical's solution is elegantly simple: an implantable device that wraps around the affected nerve and blocks pain signals from reaching the brain. "At just the push of a button, it allows individuals to completely block the nerve from sending a pain signal to the brain," says Veino. "Push a button versus pop a pill. I think anybody would be excited about that."

The technology includes a cuff electrode that wraps around the nerve near the amputation site, connected by a lead tunneled under the skin to an implantable pulse generator in the abdomen. When patients feel pain, they simply hold a remote control over the generator and press a button. Each 30-minute session provides about nine hours of relief.

Even more remarkably, patients experience decreasing pain over time. "Initially, when they get it implanted, they use it about twice a day, and then over time their pain starts to subside," Veino notes. This "central desensitization" helps normalize pain pathways that had become overwhelmed.

The clinical results have been dramatic. "We watched not only the level of pain reduction, but a significant drop in opioids – an 86% reduction, with 42% of patients stopping opioids altogether," Veino says. "And then we had a very significant increase in quality of life, return to work, walking, relationships, sleeping – all the things that really matter to us as humans."

Bringing this technology to market hasn't been easy. The clinical trial process began in 2014 and took nearly a decade to complete, with changing FDA guidelines and rigorous testing requirements along the way. "It's about on average $100 million for a device that goes through FDA PMA clinical trials from start to finish," Veino explains.

JobsOhio has been a crucial partner throughout this journey. The organization made its initial investment before Veino joined in 2018, supporting the Ohio-born technology that emerged from Case Western Reserve University. "Out of all the people we work with, they're the best in terms of their commitment to ensuring success," says Veino. "Quality of interaction, careful, thoughtful partnership – they're not just looking to make a buck, which I can't say for all venture capitalists we deal with."

With FDA approval secured, Neuros Medical is now working on reimbursement – seeking its own unique code rather than trying to fit into existing categories. While administrative transitions have slowed the process, Veino remains optimistic about commercialization in the near future.

"It's not every day that you get to wake up and do something that's this life-changing to a group of people that traditionally have no real options," Veino reflects. "I'm just really excited for the future."

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