A team of researchers from Washington University has developed a wireless device the width of a human hair that can be implanted in the brain and activated by remote control to deliver drugs. The technology, demonstrated for the first time in mice, may one day be used to treat pain, depression, epilepsy and other neurological disorders in people by targeting therapies to specific brain circuits, according to the researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The study carried out is a major step forward in pharmacology and builds on earlier work in optogenetics, a technology that makes individual brain cells sensitive to light and then activates those targeted populations of cells with flashes of light. Because it is not yet practical to re-engineer human neurons, the researchers made the tiny wireless devices capable of delivering drugs directly into the brain with the remote push of a button. The study was published in the 30 July print issue of Cell.
Previous attempts to deliver drugs or other agents, such as enzymes, to experimental animals have required the animals to be tethered to pumps and tubes that restricted their movement. But the new devices were built with four chambers to carry drugs directly into the brain. By activating brain cells with drugs and with light, the scientists are getting an unprecedented look at the inner workings of the brain.
The NIH BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Technologies) Initiative aims to accelerate the development and application of new technologies to shed light on the complex links between brain function and behaviour.
The new devices ultimately may help people with neurological disorders and other problems, according to co-first authors Jae-Woong Jeong, PhD, a former postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois and now assistant professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering at the University of Colorado, and Jordan G. McCall, PhD, graduate student from the Bruchas lab.
Jeong said: ‘The device embeds microfluid channels and microscale pumps, but it is soft like brain tissue and can remain in the brain and function for a long time without causing inflammation or neural damage.’
As part of the study, the researchers showed that by delivering a drug to one side of an animal’s brain, they could stimulate neurons involved in movement, which caused the mouse to move in a circle.