Iota Biosciences: Neural Dust for Bioelectronic Implantable Medical Devices
Company founded: 2017
Founders: UC Berkeley Professor Michel Maharbiz (UC Berkeley PhD, 2003, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), UC Berkeley Professor Jose Carmena
The spinout story of Iota Biosciences started in 2012, with a collaboration between UC Berkeley EECS professors Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz, a self-described gadget builder.1 Inspired by advances in electronics miniaturization, manufacturing, and power efficiency, the researchers teamed up to improve microelectrode-based devices that could be used to monitor and stimulate nerve, muscle, and organ tissue. At that time the tiny electrodes needed to be wired to a larger device to provide power, control, and communication functionality. That limited their potential as medical implants.
“The idea at first was to have free-floating motes in the brain with RF powering them,” Carmena said. But they encountered a fundamental problem. The long wavelength of RF signals requires an antenna that is too large for a long-term implantable device. “There was a meeting at which everything died, because we were like two orders of magnitude away from what we needed. The physics just weren’t there,” Carmena recalled. “So we’re like, ‘I guess that’s it!’”2
But soon after, Maharbiz had a “eureka” moment—“as weird as it sounds, it occurred to me in a parking lot. You just think about it and all these things align.”3 His idea was to use ultrasound. In comparison to RF, which requires millimeter- or centimeter-sized antennas, ultrasonic energy can be collected with tiny piezocrystals that can be as small as hundreds of microns. Also, RF radiation gets heavily absorbed by the human body and turns into heat. “Ultrasound doesn’t do that,” Maharbiz said. “You’re just Jell-O—it goes right through you.”4
Their technology, which they named “neural dust,” has the potential to advance brain-machine interfaces that can control prosthetics and improve the lives of millions of people suffering from spinal cord injury, stroke, and other disabling conditions.
In 2013, the potential of neural dust led to a Spark Award grant from UC Berkeley’s Bakar Fellows program. In a 2013 article about the Bakar program, Marharbiz said, “The funding encourages us to look at processes—to think about experiments that we wouldn’t likely be able to pursue with federal research grants. It’s helping us look at how to leverage the activity going on in our labs to push commercialization and help people regain movement.” In that same article, Carmena said, “The Bakar support has a very interesting effect on us. I’ve always thought about bringing this technology all the way from the lab to commercialization to help disabled people. But you’re busy and have many obligations, and the goal gets pushed back. The Bakar program changed my mindset. We have access to experts who can help us along this route; resources to understand patent issues. You are almost pushed towards a commercial effort. And that can only help in the long run.”5
The research team also leveraged UC Berkeley’s Marvell Nanofabrication shared R&D facility, the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center (a university-industry research program supported by the US National Science Foundation), the Berkeley SkyDeck startup accelerator program, and a unique program at UC Berkeley that enables startups to conduct commercial R&D in a professor’s lab.6 In a 2014 faculty profile, Maharbiz said, “Berkeley is weirdly special about people collaborating openly. We have a culture of rewarding that kind of interdisciplinary stuff, and that’s what I like. I mean I love doing these things.”7
In 2017, with $1 million in seed funding, Carmena and Maharbiz cofounded Iota Biosciences to commercialize their bioelectronic implantable medical technology.8 The two professors shared the role of co-CEOs, and Iota exclusively licensed the university’s patent rights. Iota raised a $15 million Series A round of funding in 2018 to advance the company’s prototypes for eventual human trials. One of the participants in that funding was the venture capital subsidiary of Astellas, a Tokyo-based global pharmaceutical company. A year later, Astellas and Iota established a collaborative R&D agreement to explore new biosensing and treatment measures using Iota’s ultrasmall implantable medical technology. Under that collaboration Astellas and Iota jointly designed implantable medical devices and conducted preclinical studies for several diseases with high unmet medical needs.9
In 2020, Astellas acquired Iota for $127.6 million plus an additional $176.5 million for potential milestone achievements. Carmena and Marhabiz said about the acquisition: “The partnership between Iota and Astellas allows us to combine our respective strengths to bring revolutionary new approaches to managing and treating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people across the world. A new era in bioelectronic medicine is dawning and Iota Biosciences, powered by Astellas, will be leading the charge.”10
Following the acquisition, Iota focused on multiple projects in the Active Class 3 implantable device space, spanning neural to bioelectronic applications. In 2024 the US Food and Drug Administration approved Iota’s investigational device exemption for an early feasibility study focused on an implantable device designed to deliver electrical stimulation directly to the bladder wall, inducing contractions that facilitate bladder emptying in individuals impacted by an underactive bladder.
1 Carmena had a joint appointment with the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley, and Maharbiz had a joint appointment in the UC Berkeley College of Engineering Bioengineering Department.
2 Quoted in Devin Coldewey, “Iota Biosciences Raises $15M to Produce In-body Sensors Smaller Than a Grain of Rice,” TechCrunch, December 27, 2018, https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/27/iota-biosciences-raises-15m-to-produce-in-body-sensors-smaller-than-a-grain-of-rice.
3 Quoted in Coldewey, “Iota Biosciences Raises $15M to Produce In-body Sensors.”
4 Quoted in Coldewey, “Iota Biosciences Raises $15M to Produce In-body Sensors.”
5 Michel Maharbiz, Bakar Fellows Program, https://bakarfellows.berkeley.edu/profile/michel-maharbiz/.
6 The unique program is the RIC FLEXIE program. To learn more, see https://ipira.berkeley.edu/flexie.
7 Georgeann Sack, “Faculty Profile: Michel Maharbiz,” Berkeley Science Review, April 27, 2014, https://berkeleysciencereview.com/article/2014/04/27/faculty-profile-michel-maharbiz.
8 Iota raised $1 million in seed funding from UC Berkeley almuni Coleman Fung and Richard Passov. Michel Maharbiz also cofounded Cortera Neurotech, Tweedle Technologies, Microreactor Inc.
9 Press release, September 13, 2019, www.astellas.com/en/system/files/news/2020-10/20190913_EG_2.pdf.
10 Quoted in “Astellas to Aqcuire Iota Biosciences,” October 15, 2020, www.astellas.com/en/news/16126.
Published in Startup Campus: How UC Berkeley Became an Unexpected Leader in Entrepreneurship and Startups, August 2025
