Cortera Neurotechnologies Inc. has developed a neurostimulation device that can simultaneously monitor and stimulate the brain, which they note as a first in the field. There are existing closed loop neurostimulators but enabling brain monitoring throughout stimulation had remained a technical hurdle.

Medical device startups are becoming increasingly ambitious when it comes to treating diseases that are ill-served by drugs. The latest on this front is Enclear Therapies Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that is developing a device to clear toxic proteins from cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to treat diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and other neurological diseases.

The med-tech industry turned in a strong stock market performance for the second year in a row in 2018. That's despite the massive retrenchment this quarter in the broader markets, which have fallen into negative territory after soaring earlier in the year. Pharma and biotech stocks also have been hit hard by drug pricing uncertainty and the downside of a long-time frothy market.