Bioelectronics is a burgeoning medical field, but big breakthroughs have been made, such as scientists successfully growing electrodes in living tissue, paving the way for fully integrated electronic circuits to treat neurological disorders. You may have just made the leap.
Scientists at Sweden’s Linköping University, Lund University and Gothenburg University used body molecules to create and activate electrodes in living tissue. The researchers are the first to successfully do this without the need for external signals or by altering genes.
In experiments conducted at Lund University, zebrafish and medicinal leeches were injected with gels containing enzymes as ‘assembly molecules’. From this, scientists observed electrodes forming around nerve tissue in the zebrafish brain, heart, caudal fin, and leech. Animals were neither harmed by the gel nor adversely affected by the electrodes.
“By making smart changes to the chemistry, we were able to develop electrodes that were accepted by brain tissue and the immune system. Zebrafish are an excellent model for studying organic electrodes in the brain,” he said. Professor Roger Olson of the Lund University School of Medicine explains.
In general, an embedded object is required to activate electrical circuits in the body. Not surprisingly, it took the team several years to develop the gel. This required the right structure and ingredients to succeed in animal cells.
“When in contact with a substance in the body, the gel changes its structure and becomes conductive, which it was not before injection. Depending on the tissue, we can also adjust the composition of the gel to initiate electrical processes.” said Xenofon. Dr. Strakosas is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Organic Electronics (LOE), Linköping University.
It may all sound like science fiction right now, but the researchers believe that this avenue of research will, in the long run, see circuits fully integrated into the human body. This is something that could change the face of neurological therapy. While the team acknowledges that there are “various problems to solve,” the study offers a new perspective on bioelectronics.
“For decades, we’ve been trying to make electronics that mimic biology,” said LOE professor Magnus Bergren. Told.
The study was published in a journal Chemistry.
Source: Linköping University via EurekaAlert!
