StrokeFighter: Novel Bioelectronic Therapy for Acute Ischemic Stroke

• Principal investigators include: 
  • Chunyan Li, PhD, associate professor at the Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes
  • Timothy G. White, MD, chief resident at the Department of Neurosurgery at North Shore University Hospital

The announcement was made during the health system’s Made for Big Ideas™ Showcase.

“Innovation and creativity are the essence of good organizations, and at Northwell we take pride in fostering a culture that promotes our team members who strive to advance science and the delivery of care,” said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health president and CEO. “All of these submissions represent the very best ideas and novel approaches Northwell, and its talent, are pursuing to tackle some of health care’s biggest issues.” 

Drs. King and Nadella, along with Tiffany Zavadsky, CRNP, created an AI-enabled solution to identify both pre-diagnosed and newly diagnosed cancer patients and navigate them to cancer care, including access to novel clinical trials. They called it iNav.

“This feels like a new beginning,” said Dr. King. “We recognized that one of the key problems in oncology is that we’re not able to navigate patients to care properly and quickly. What we can do with iNav is use technology to identify patients much earlier than we did before and promptly send them to get the correct care they need.”   

Presented by Drs. Li and White, StrokeFighter is a cutting-edge bioelectronic medicine therapy designed to alleviate the negative effects of acute ischemic stroke (lack of blood flow to the brain), while also preventing and treating stroke-induced vascular cognitive impairments through targeted electrical stimulation of the trigeminal nerve. The project team has dedicated the last five years to optimizing trigeminal nerve stimulation parameters by using a unique wrap-around technique that could assist in early stroke treatment.  

“This work comes from a very small lab, and I really appreciate this opportunity,” said Dr. Li. “Some people may not know about our work or what bioelectronic medicine is, but our research may one day help a lot of patients.” 

Other members of the StrokeFighter team include:

• Yousef Al-Abed, PhD, co-director of the Institute for Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes;
• Daniel Sciubba, MD, MBA, Lucille and Milton Cohn professor and chair of neurosurgery at Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, senior vice president of neurosurgery at Northwell Health, and co-director of the Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery at Northwell Health;
• Stavros Zanos, MD, PhD, associate professor at the Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes;
• Kevin Shah, MD, chief resident of the department of neurosurgery at North Shore University Hospital; and
• Henry Woo, MD, vice chairman and director of cerebrovascular neurosurgery at North Shore University Hospital and professor of neurosurgery at Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.

“Since 2017, the Innovation Challenge event has served as a wonderful forum to showcase the novel approaches towards improving care developed by our Northwell colleagues,” said Richard Mulry, president and CEO of Northwell Holdings. “We are proud to partner with them to advance these solutions and extend their impact on the nature and delivery of care.”  

Northwell Holdings, the for-profit venture investment arm of Northwell Health, works with doctors, scientists, staff, and entrepreneurs both in and out of the health system to advance the commercial potential for internal innovation and development of commercial joint ventures.  

The last Innovation Challenge, held in 2021, awarded two transformative projects: a 3D imaging device to identify tissue pressure injuries early and a non-invasive bioelectronic medicine spleen stimulator to treat excessive bleeding. Past projects funded have included research into the first non-invasive diagnostic test for endometriosis, a therapeutic drug candidate as a potential treatment for HPV infection, real-time actionable data related to ED utilization, and the allocation of clinical resources and infrared thermography for early detection of tissue pressure injury.