
Program Snapshot
The Common Fund’s Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions (SPARC) program accelerates development of therapeutic devices that modulate electrical activity in nerves to improve organ function. This therapeutic strategy, also known as “bioelectronic medicine,” could offer new treatment options for diverse diseases and conditions such as hypertension, heart failure, gastrointestinal disorders, and more.
SPARC-V (Vagus nerve mapping and physiology)
- Creating more precise and detailed maps of the human vagus nerve, a bioelectronic highway that carries two-way electrical signals between the brain and internal organs of the body
- Identifying the physiological effects of altering vagus nerve activity to discover how best to stimulate nerve fibers for specific therapeutic effects
SPARC-O (Open-source neuromodulation technologies)
- Developing open-source technologies and components needed to safely and effectively alter nerve function
SPARC-X (Neuromod Prize)
- Providing an exciting challenge competition that will incentivize groundbreaking proof-of-concept demonstrations of bioelectronic medicine approaches that will help patients, learn more at neuromodprize.com
SPARC Portal (Resources for advancing bioelectronic medicine)
- Advancing bioelectronic medicine by providing open access to digital resources that can be shared, cited, visualized, computed, and used for virtual experimentation, available at sparc.science
SPARC Awards: Other Transactions (OT2 and OT3) and Cooperative Agreements (U18 and U01)
Use the various organ and neuromodulation icons below to explore the SPARC research portfolio.
Please be aware that some projects span multiple organs and other neural targets.
This page last reviewed on May 2, 2022