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Updated: May 16, 2025

The DREAM Implant: A Lightweight, Modular, and Cost-Effective Implant System for Chronic Electrophysiology in Head-Fixed and Freely Behaving Mice
Published on: July 26, 2024
Implantable systems for neurological chronotherapy
Seung Ho Lee1, Roemer Pott Hofstede2, Adrián Noriega de la Colina3
1The David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Division of Gastroenterology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
None:
Implantable systems for neurological chronotherapy are poised to revolutionize the treatment of central nervous system diseases and disorders. These devices enable precise, time-controlled drug delivery aligned with the body's circadian rhythms, optimizing therapeutic outcomes. By bypassing the blood-brain barrier, they achieve high local drug concentrations while minimizing systemic side effects, offering significant advantages for conditions where traditional therapies often fall short. Platforms like SynchroMed II and CraniUS showcase this innovation, providing programmable delivery for conditions such as epilepsy and glioblastoma, with customizable profiles ranging from continuous infusion to timed bolus administration. Preclinical and clinical studies underscore the efficacy of aligning drug delivery with circadian rhythms, enhancing outcomes in chrono-chemotherapy and anti-epileptic treatments. Despite their promise, challenges remain, including the invasiveness of implantation within the brain, device longevity, synchronization complexities, and cost(s). Accordingly, this review explores the current state of implantable neurological systems that may be leveraged for chronotherapy, their applications, limitations, and potential to transform neurological disease/disorder management.

