Bioelectronics

Imagine a world...

There are no pills or daily injections and your disease is treated by a device that can stimulate and monitor your nervous system with minimal impact on your day to day life.

This may sound like something from a bad (or excellent) sci-fi film, but the idea of recording, analysing and manipulating electrical impulses within the body to treat diseases is becoming more plausible due to advances in bioelectronics.

Bioelectronic devices have been revolutionising medicine for almost 100 years. Today hundreds of thousands of devices are implanted annually. These range from pacemakers and implantable defibrillators that treat cardiac disease to deep brain stimulators that can directly interact with nerves to treat Parkinson s disease. These devices have radically improved patients quality of life, and demonstrate the potential this field has to deliver innovative mechanisms of treatment.

In the future it may be possible to develop bioelectronic devices that can interact with minute individual nerves, or huge nerve bundles like the vagus nerve. The goal is to create devices that can `plug` into the nervous system, enabling it to be analysed and corrected. In the not too distant future, this could treat a whole range of conditions including cancer, diabetes, arthritis, obesity and heart failure.

But what is happening today?

This proposed generation of bioelectronics needs devices that can track and manipulate nerve firing, but today this is not possible. Today s devices address nerves on the large scale, not the miniscule. Current technologies must be adapted and miniaturised to achieve control of neural interfaces. Some key stepping stones to achieve this are already in place. Nerve processing has been improved by eye implantable devices, microelectrodes that sit on the skin have enabled paralysed patients to move robotic arms and miniature devices can now be charged by nanotechnology.

Can devices be created that target specific nerves to treat diseases?

GlaxoSmithKline think so (1). GSK has entered this field with a $50 million venture fund to invest in start-ups and novel technology platforms that can deliver direct neural monitoring and control. GSK created the Bioelectronics Innovation Challenge , a competition for researchers to create tiny devices that can intervene with the nervous system, with $1 million going to the winning team.

In addition, Johnson & Johnshon has invested $29.6 million into CVRx, a start-up developing an implantable device to treat heart failure (2). Boehringer Ingelheim has partnered with Circuit Therapuetics, a company investigating the neural pathways found in obesity (3). In the public sector, the National Institute of Health has weighed in with a substantial $248MM fund targeting neural bioelectronics projects that are Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions (SPARC) (4).

From the lab to the body...

To hack the human nervous system, scientists from different fields will need to collaborate and embrace new tools and viewpoints, coming together to achieve things that right now we can only imagine. Why is it that Big Pharma is getting involved in this medical device field? Perhaps it is because they are recognising the limitations of molecular treatments. By plugging into the nervous system you could access a completely new modality of disease treatment that could one day replace pills, injections and other treatments currently used for major diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

How do you think this emerging feild will change big pharma... if at all?

(1) GSK Bioelectronics R&D
(2) Johnson & Johnson - CVRx Financing
(3) Boehringer Ingelheim & Circuit Therapeutics Collaboration
(4) SPARC Snapshot and Overview