New ways of managing chronic conditions with bioelectronics – small, implantable devices – could be here within a decade
Imagine you have a chronic condition such as diabetes or hypertension.
You go to see your doctor who recommends that you have an implant. A
small electronic device, introduced through standard keyhole surgery,
will change the messages your nerves send around your body so you feel
better. It sounds like something out of science fiction – but within 10
years it could be a reality, thanks to a new field known as
bioelectronic medicine.
he idea of using electrical impulses to treat long-term conditions
isn’t new. Pacemakers, which work by sending electrical impulses to the
heart to correct an irregular heartbeat, have been in use for nearly 50
years. And doctors use electrical stimulation of the spinal cord – part
of the central nervous system – to treat pain.
But what makes bioelectronics different is that it works by using
the body’s peripheral nervous system – all the nerves outside the brain
and spinal cord. These nerves carry electrical signals between the brain
and all the organs around the body that are central in chronic
diseases.
In some chronic conditions, the signals that travel around these
nerves have gone awry. In others, the changed signals can help restore
healthy organ functions. Using a small, battery-powered implant that
sends electrical pulses, nerve signal patterns can be tweaked to block
or boost the signals as required. The result of the treatment could be
to loosen the airway of someone suffering from asthma, for example, or
nudge cells to produce insulin for patients with type 2 diabetes.
Last year, GSK, together with Verily Life Sciences (owned by
Alphabet, Google’s parent company), launched a new company, Galvani
Bioelectronics. Based at GSK’s research centre in Stevenage,
Hertfordshire, and Verily’s facility in San Francisco, Galvani will seek
to bring about the promise of bioelectronic medicines to patients
around the world. While GSK brings deep scientific and clinical
expertise to the venture, Verily brings complementary expertise,
including technological knowhow to create the small, low-power
electronic implants.
In some cases, the implant may be able to completely restore the
nervous system to a healthy state, in others, the implant may quietly
and reliably continue doing its work over long periods of time. “They
will be designed so that they can reliably operate for several years,”
says Kris Famm, Galvani’s president.
Already the therapeutic concepts are being tested in rats, and early results have been encouraging.
For the 15 million people in England living with chronic conditions
such as diabetes or hypertension, the introduction of bioelectronics
could be transformative. Many chronically ill patients have to take
daily medication for the rest of their lives – medication that manages
the condition rather than cures it, and that can be accompanied by
uncomfortable side effects. The need to remember to take medication
daily (particularly if multiple tablets are involved) can be stressful,
especially for older patients and those caring for them. A bioelectronic
implant, inserted in a one-off operation, could remove that daily
stress as well as eliminate the side-effects.
The next few years promise to be both exciting and challenging:
tackling the complexity of the peripheral nervous system and designing
the best implants are not easy tasks. But Famm and his team are quietly
confident that the work they are doing could prove to be a breakthrough
– and the day when your GP prescribes a small implant instead of a
daily round of medication could be here sooner than you think.
THEGUARDIAN
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