Upgrade Your Medicine: Why Now?
The $20M Bioelectric Medicine industry is expected to reach $38.13B by 2026 - a health 8.6% CAGR. Much of the anticipated growth is attributed to a global increase in the geriatric population, as well as the related increase in cardiovascular disease and diabetes (1).
What has happened on the engineering and technology end to enable this growth? It’s easier to make implantable, battery-powered, and neurologically-connected devices when the components are tiny, batteries last a long time, and connecting to brain tissue is simple. That means that 2019 is a great year to be developing bioelectric medicine devices! In the last few years there have been significant improvements on the “hardware” end of the space
3-D printed bionic nanodevices: more than simply a collection of tech buzzwords, this innovation is allowing researchers and developers to combine biological and electronic material into single components. Biological tissue is generally 3-D, soft, and temperature sensitive; compared to electronic components which are flat, brittle, and static (2). Advances in 3-D printing and nanotechnolgoy have allowed scientists to interweave these previously-incompatible materials into the same structure with precise architecture. You could think of it like a papier-mâché project: the wet and mushy “paper” is biological tissue which integrates with host organs, and the wire frame is electronic componentry which provides stimulating or monitoring capability.
Miniaturized neuron monitoring technology: neurons communicate by transmitting electricity from one cell to another, and doctors use this as a way to monitor function in the brain (electroencephalogram or EEG) and the heart (electrocardiogram or EKG). However there are huge numbers of sophisticated neural pathways which are located adjacent to each other (especially in the brain). Existing monitoring technology can measure activity in a particular region, but isn’t able to reliably resolve signals at the cellular level. Recently scientists have developed a miniaturized “probe” technology that can be directly implanted into the brain and monitor neuron activity at the single-cell level (3). Two metaphors help understand this technological achievement and its implications. The technological paradigm itself is similar to retrieving a document from within a locked room. You can open the door with a battering ram, or pick the lock. In this example the door is your brain, and if you’d like to use it again then the pick would be very preferable. Evaluating neuronal function at the cellular level instead of regional is like saying “There’s construction on Santa Monica and traffic is backed up, so you should take Pico to get to Beverly Hills” instead of saying “traffic is bad near Beverly Hills”.
Modulating cellular polarity via electrochemical control: it’s tough to fulfill your purpose when you don’t know who you are. This is common to cells just as much as it is to humans, and cellular polarity is one way cells figure themselves out. Cellular polarity is a way that cells develop their “heads” from “feet” by directing certain subcellular components to specific regions of the cell. Recent research has demonstrated that this system may be controlled by an electrochemical gradient, which could potentially provide a mechanism to study and address cellular development malfunctions electronically (4).
These are three of the major technological innovations that are enabling the growth of the biolectric medicine industry. With science like this, the future looks bright!
References
1 - Biolectric Medicine Market Summary
2 - 3D printed bionic nanodevices
3 - Three-dimensional macroporous nanoelectronic networks as minimally invasive brain probes