Science PINS neuromodulation prize

• Science magazine announced the PINS neuromodulation prize, highlighting DBS and related stimulation work.¹

Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)

• The 2025 Science & PINS Prize for Neuromodulation was awarded to Newton Cho (surgeon-scientist at the University of British Columbia / International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries) for identifying a novel brain-circuit target to improve walking after spinal cord injury (SCI).²³
• The prize is a joint award of Science/AAAS and China’s PINS Medical, described as the first international prize dedicated to neuromodulation; the winner receives US$25,000 (runner-up US$5,000) and publishes a prize essay in Science.⁴²
• Cho’s winning essay reports that deep brain stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus produced long-lasting improvements in walking in two people with partial (incomplete) SCI, without serious side effects.²³
• The underlying research (2024, Nature Medicine) used whole-brain imaging in mice recovering from SCI to reveal brain circuits that are suboptimally activated after injury.²⁵
• Stimulating a subset of excitatory neurons in the lateral hypothalamus produced immediate walking improvement across rodent SCI models before the two-patient clinical trial.²⁵
• Cho plans to combine deep brain stimulation with spinal cord stimulation and to test lateral-hypothalamus stimulation for cervical injuries affecting hand function; larger trials are needed to establish efficacy.²
• The 2025 finalist was Huiliang Wang (University of Texas at Austin), recognized for the essay “Rapid deep brain chemogenetics.”²
• Prize officials framed the work as potentially paradigm-shifting: Science senior editor Mattia Maroso praised the research quality, and PINS Medical CEO Hao Hongwei said it expands the therapeutic spectrum of neuromodulation.²

Footnotes

1. https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiX0FVX3lxTE84dTJhemNFX0ZaN3plbXFWN3FmMDF3SElYWGtST3IwVDZ2anZzeHlSVzJzVzVPNXJLcjBPOGFXNm96UWF1cXI0QVVmcWJJQ0V3YjFTRlZBYkE4WXRxVW13?oc=5 ↩

2. https://www.aaas.org/news/prize-winning-research-could-help-spinal-cord-injury-patients-regain-mobility ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea0845 ↩ ↩²

4. https://www.science.org/content/prize-award/science-pins-prize-for-neuromodulation ↩

5. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03306-x ↩ ↩²