Jared Jones / Rice University
HOBIT device generates oxygen, keeping drug-producing cells functioning for weeks.
A new generation of bioelectronic implants could pave the way for treatments in which the The body itself starts to produce medicines continuouslywithout the need for frequent injections or regular doses.
The technology, described by researchers at Rice University and Carnegie Mellon University, was presented as a kind of “living pharmacy”: a small implantable device that houses genetically modified cells and keeps them active for weeks, allowing them to manufacture therapeutic substances directly in the body.
The system was tested on animals and represents, according to the authors, an important step towards future long-term therapies against chronic diseases.
The device is called the hobbit acronym in English for a hybrid bioelectronic oxygenation system for implanted therapies.
It has dimensions approximately those of a chewing gum folded and was designed to be placed under the skin, in a minimally invasive intervention.
The main innovation – in this “big leap” in technology, as described by – is the fact of integrating, in the same implant, a chamber with therapeutic cells, a miniaturized oxygen generator, a battery and electronic components with wireless communication.
This architecture allows solving one of the biggest obstacles of this type of approach: the lack of oxygen. When many cells are concentrated in a small space, they compete with each other and die quickly, compromising the production of the medicine. To overcome this problem, HOBIT generates oxygen directly where the cells are encapsulated.
According to , the system uses a surface based on iridium oxide and electricity supplied by an internal battery to split water molecules present in surrounding tissues, producing oxygen without generating harmful byproducts.
As a result, researchers were able to maintain cell densities about six times higher to those obtained with conventional methods without oxygenation.
The implant also uses a double encapsulation, designed to protect the cells of the host’s immune system and, at the same time, allow the passage of nutrients and therapeutic molecules produced.
In these trials in rats, the cells were programmed to produce three different biological agents simultaneously: an anti-HIV antibody, a molecule similar to GLP-1 used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, and leptin, a hormone linked to the regulation of appetite and metabolism.
Over the course of 30 days, animals with oxygenated implants maintained stable levels of these compounds in their blood.
In the control devices, without oxygen generation, the molecules with the shortest half-life became undetectable after seven days and the others progressively decreased.
At the end of the experiment, approx. 65% of the cells continued viable in implants with oxygenation, against just 20% of us remaining.
The researchers argue that the platform could, in the future, be adapted for specific applications, including diabetes therapies based on transplanted pancreatic cells.
Before that, tests on larger animals and more experimental validation will be needed.
Still, this study reinforces the idea that the combination of bioelectronics and cell therapy can give rise to programmable drug “factories” inside the human body.
