Exclusive Interview with Marcus Gerhardt, CEO of Blackrock Neurotech

With the digital transformation taking over the world, the medical industry is also following in its footsteps. In a small span of time, neurotechnology has advanced a lot and it has been a breakthrough in the health industry. Blackrock Neurotech provides innovative tools and neurotech expertise to translate technology into novel, implantable clinical solutions that improve human lives. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Marcus Gerhardt, CEO of Blackrock Neurotech. 

Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers. 

Blackrock Neurotech was founded in 2008 to build neurotechnology that helps patients with neurological disorders, such as paralysis, stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson's, hearing loss, blindness, depression, and anxiety. Approximately 5 million people in the US live with some form of paralysis, so that has been our focus up to this time.

Our flagship product, the Blackrock NeuroPort Array (Utah Array) is FDA-approved and the first brain-computer interface in humans. Now the gold standard of BCIs, the system holds the record as the longest chronic implant in humans (seven years) and ten years in non-human primates. Further, the array has been used in thousands of research and clinical studies by the world's top institutions to safely and effectively help restore functions such as movement in patients with paralysis.

By the end of the year, we plan to release MoveAgain, a miniaturized, wired version of this system, in hopes of reaching a much wider population of patients with movement disorders. We're very excited about the ways in which this device will help restore function – and change lives.

With what mission and objectives, was the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?

Our mission is simple: we want people to walk, talk, see and hear again. But we also have patients using their devices to make art and play music. We know these systems can increase the quality of life and independence for people — and the possibilities are endless. 

The journey has been a long one. Neuroscience is a tough industry to break into and it takes a long time to demonstrate safety and efficacy measures in human patients. To this measure, we're proud of our accomplishments to date: more than 90% of BCI Pioneers/participants with implantable brain-computer interfaces were implanted with Blackrock technology, and our neuroscience products are used by more than 500 of the top global research institutions. Our technology has also supported thousands of breakthrough research & clinical studies — and we're just getting started.

Brief us about the proactive Founder/CEO of the company and his/her contributions towards the company and the industry. 

Prior to joining Blackrock, I co-founded a number of companies such as Mondus, a pioneering eCommerce platform, and BBI, an international consulting firm. Since joining Blackrock, I've focused on operational excellence and profitability. We've dramatically scaled the company's team, driven strategic investment in areas of potential growth, and expanded the portfolio of technologies.  My co-founder and longtime friend, Florian Solzbacher, focuses on technology and science – he focuses on technical innovation, clinical translation, and patient impact. We are consistently identifying and validating new application-specific solutions and bringing our medical devices to fruition, from concept and design to product launch and production. 

How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead?

We are seeing the beginning of an escalation in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders and disabilities. As Blackrock moves toward our goal of commercialization in 2022, we will see an increased number of applications for BCI and neuro devices across a variety of neurological disorders, including the restoration of communication and hearing, treating or mitigating pain, ameliorating depression, and many others. Miniaturization of our technology will continue, while at the same time we are increasing functional capabilities and performance. Surgical procedures will become (depending on use case) less invasive and more efficient and automated — and we will see more clinical centers offer these solutions. We hope that, in the coming years, implants are available to the millions of people who need them, much like a pacemaker is for those with heart issues.

What is the edge your company has over other players in the industry?

For one, we are years ahead of other implantable companies when it comes to trials in humans. Of the 35 participants globally with implantable BCIs, 31 have been implanted with Blackrock technology. So we now have significant data about what happens when these devices are implanted for long periods of time – now it's time to scale this technology.

Another area that sets us apart is the breadth of our collaborations and reputation within the neuroscience community and at large. We build tools that empower more than five hundred institutional partners and customers, including Johns Hopkins, Brown, Caltech, University of Pittsburgh, and we have an international presence with more than two hundred top research and clinical institutions globally. Our technology has been used in thousands of peer-reviewed neuroscience studies, and patient stories featured in The NY Times, 60 Minutes, Bloomberg, Inside Edition, PBC, New Yorker, and others.

A third area is ethics. As an important part of Blackrock's culture and mission, we decided to establish an Ethics Advisory Board—an independent governing body of experts across policy, data security, neuroscience, and patient advocacy – to help us make clear decisions on the neurotech issues of tomorrow.  This esteemed group of individuals and the plans to incorporate their guidance in our decision-making will be announced soon.

On the innovation front, there have been a number of exciting developments this past year, including: 

A partnership with ClearPoint Neuro to develop an automated, replicable surgical solution for implanting BCIs into patients that is more streamlined and effective than the BCI implantation surgeries performed to date. 

In September, Blackrock announced we are developing a novel auditory nerve implant device to restore hearing in a large population of patients who are not candidates for a cochlear implant. The goal is to ultimately implant 40-50 deaf patients within the next three years.

In May, we announced a partnership with Northwestern University to develop a wireless, fully implantable device that will halve the time it takes for people to recover from disrupted sleep/wake cycles. Developed primarily for military personnel and first responders, the team plans to translate this technology for the many people who suffer negative effects from traveling long distances or working long and irregular hours.

Most recently, we announced a deal with Stanford wherein their machine learning software will be incorporated into our TalkAgain device, which we plan to commercialize in the coming 12 months. These high-performance algorithms enable patients to communicate by imagining handwriting or typing – and are highly accurate. 

These are just a few – and there's more to come.

How have you seen the evolution of the industry? As you said that you have been here from the beginning, how has the growth been?

My partner Florian, who I have known since grade school, has been doing this for many years and co-founded several additional companies in neuroscience including Blackrock Neuromed, SentioMed, and First Sensor Technology. 

The neuroscience industry has changed a lot in the past ten years. There is a tremendous amount of interest and capital being infused into the space now, in no small part thanks to entrepreneurs like Elon Musk coming in with a lot of enthusiasm.  The public is also very excited by the possibilities, and so this is really an inflection point for the whole field. We see it as Blackrock's responsibility to ensure clinical translation of all the achievements made in the lab these past few decades. Patients are ready – and so are we.