During his four years of high school, Kamran Ansari invented a groundbreaking neuromodulation device and co-founded a medical tech startup with his sister, Nadia Ansari, aiming to find a better solution for her chronic pain.
Nadia was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease, in 2017. A week after her diagnosis, Kamran began researching ways to alleviate her pain using pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) therapy. He soon found himself captivated by how something invisible – electromagnetic energy – could hold the power to ease the suffering of so many.
“When you go into the world of pain, you realize it is everywhere you turn,” Ansari told the Business Journal. “Everyone is touched by it.”
This realization drove him to focus on designing a PEMF device that sends low-level electromagnetic fields to different areas of the brain, reducing neuropathic pain in 30 minutes.
The device, created in the teen’s bedroom, has impressed heavyweights in Orange County’s medtech industry.
“I have followed his journey and took note of his entrepreneurial skills and dedication, in transforming a need into a groundbreaking technology,” Mike Mussallem, former chief executive and chairman of Edwards Lifesciences, wrote in a letter of recommendation for the award to the Business Journal’s panel of judges.
Dr. Michelle Khine, who teaches biomedical engineering at UCI, began personally using the device two years ago. She was the first doctor to alert the local medical community about Ansari’s work and now is on the company’s board of advisors.
“I believe we will see in 20 years that Kamran is going to be on the level of Elon Musk or Steve Jobs,” Khine wrote in a recommendation letter.
The device is so impressive that Ansari won a Business Journal Innovator of the Year Award at the Irvine Marriott on Sept. 12. The college-bound teen is the youngest recipient to nab the award during its ten years.
He left Orange County last week to drive up north to join his sister for his first year at Stanford University, where he’ll major in bioengineering with an interest in physics.
Ansari said the flexible schedule of college classes will give him even more time to focus on his company, FluxWear Inc.
The First Day
Ansari said that his sister used the first working version of the device, designed as a hat, on Oct. 30, 2020, following a year of tests with different prototypes. It worked so well that his sister and parents then pushed him to share the technology with more people in pain, he said.
The technology, called Shift, led him to form FluxWear with his sister.
“She tells me, ‘My job description is doing everything that Kamran doesn’t like to do,’” he added with a laugh.
It has now raised $1.5 million in funding to advance the FDA approval process and initial clinical trials.
The Shift cap is now being tested on patients with chemo-induced peripheral neuropathy, migraines and even back pain.
“There’s research on so many other potential applications in design,” he said. “We believe, as a company that likes to innovate, that we’re going to be in this constant R&D process.”
Anecdotal Proof
The startup’s current focus is gathering more scientific data around different aspects of the Shift neuromodulation device.
“The first aspect is a better understanding from the basic mechanism standpoint, of what’s working at a cellular level,” he said.
The Ansari siblings are contacting labs around Palo Alto and near UCLA.
“We believe that understanding the general theory and gaining more knowledge will allow us to build even better products and devices.”
The second aspect of the study is the human level, according to Ansari. Based on a previous study, Shift was found to be 62% effective in reducing pain and 66% effective in reducing anxiety.
FluxWear is now partnering with local hospitals to test the device in larger clinical trials.
Hoag Hospital is running a trial on chemo-induced peripheral neuropathy, which includes 40 patients, and CHOC is organizing a clinical trial to study the hat’s effects on persistent concussion syndrome.
There’s also an independent study to determine if it can help chronic lower back pain.
FluxWear has also applied for grants from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to study the hat’s effect on migraines, the first of several “disease verticals” Ansari has plans to explore. If the grant is rejected, he said the startup will use the capital its raised to conduct an independent trial.
“The current state is basically to get data and show what we’ve seen more anecdotally in the [pain] community,” Ansari said.
FluxWear was also highlighted as a company to watch at Octane’s High Tech Awards.
“There are a lot of people in the Orange County community specifically who have the opinion that it doesn’t matter how old you are, how young you are – innovation can come from anywhere,” Ansari said. “That is the true innovators mindset.”
The Way the Hat Works
When researching pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) therapy to develop what would eventually become Shift technology, Kamran Ansari said it was like solving a puzzle that was still being developed.
“I was entering this field at a time when the puzzle pieces were actively being created,” he said.
Inspired by other PEMF devices his sister Nadia used, which were the ones that worked best, Ansari said it was the magic of something invisible taking away her pain that enchanted him.
He learned that he needed to modify inflammation in the central nervous system that causes peripheral neuropathic, or nerve, pain. The PEMF therapy uses a multidirectional, low intensity magnetic field to induce a reduction in inflammation.
“My puzzle piece was that you don’t want to create a magnetic field with one or two emitters because you have limited directions your magnetic field can go,” Ansari said. “You want as many as you can possibly have, like 50 or more.”
He had the idea for “maximized directionality” in one of his physics classes – in high school.
The Ansari siblings realized the technology helped anxiety as well.
Ansari’s efforts in pioneering this technology have earned him six issued patents with four more pending.
By putting the Shift cap in front of doctors and investors, Ansari knew he needed to let the device stand on its own.
“When you make something in your room and it’s so close to you, it’s hard to let it stand on its own,” he said. “But you also come to realize that the only way for it to actually help people is to do that.”
Ansari and his sister are also working to make Shift accessible by pursuing insurance coverage.
“We want this to be put up to scientific, rigorous tests as much as anyone else, not only because we want it to be shown as safe and effective but also to have the level of respect that is required when someone [is] using it for their pain or needs access to it.”
