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Neurotechnology News | April 18–24, 2026

Let's cut through the noise.

Regulatory plumbing dominated the week: CorTec entered the FDA's TAP program with a third patient implanted, ONWARD's €40.6M Euronext placement closed and listed, and Epia Neuro emerged from three years of stealth with a sub-dural read/write architecture aimed at both cortex and deep brain.

CorTec's Brain Interchange platform was accepted into the FDA's Total Product Life Cycle Advisory Program (TAP) on April 23, with the company's third patient implanted at Harborview Medical Center earlier the same week. The system has now logged nine months of stable wireless cortical recording in human subjects under NIH grant UH3NS121565, with UW's Jeffrey Ojemann as implanting investigator. This stands above the rest of the week's news because it's the first BCI platform to clear the TAP threshold while also producing durable in-human data — most peer companies have one or the other, not both. The signal here is regulatory: TAP acceptance reframes the chronic implantable BCI pathway from a Breakthrough-only conversation into a structured lifecycle review.

Published: April 23 — CorTec press release / Manila Times republish

CorTec implanted its third patient at Harborview Medical Center this week, with the platform now logging nine months of stable wireless cortical recording under NIH grant UH3NS121565 (PI: Jeffrey Ojemann, UW). The cohort remains small but the durability data is what matters here.

💡 Why it matters: Nine months of stable wireless recording in a fully implanted system is a longevity benchmark most BCI platforms haven't published — see Signal of the Week for the regulatory implications.

Published: April 16 (placement) / April 22 (listing) — Euronext company news

ONWARD placed 13,520,254 new shares at €3.00, with EQT Life Sciences anchoring at €25M; new shares listed on Euronext on April 22. Proceeds extend cash runway to Q1 2028 and fund the Empower BP pivotal trial of implantable ARC-IM for blood-pressure instability in spinal cord injury.

💡 Why it matters: Cash to Q1 2028 buys ONWARD past the Empower BP pivotal readout without another raise — that removes the funding-overhang variable from the ARC-IM regulatory clock and puts SCI autonomic stim ahead of motor-recovery on the clearance roadmap.

Published: April 14 (launch) / April 22 (Deep Coverage) — BusinessWire launch release / Bio-IT World, (Deep Coverage)

Michel Maharbiz revealed Epia Neuro after three years of stealth: 45 staff, sub-dura insertion in under an hour, read/write capability at both cortex and deep-brain targets, with first-in-human planned at Lenox Hill in 2026. The architectural pitch is a "lifelong companion" — a single device covering targets that today require either a cortical BCI or DBS, but not both.

💡 Why it matters: Sub-dura placement under an hour with read/write at both cortex and deep brain is a different architectural bet than the cortex-only BCIs dominating the funding cycle — if first-in-human lands in 2026, the depth-vs-bandwidth tradeoff that has defined BCI design for the last five years becomes a three-axis problem.

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