
CMU researcher Chris Bettinger, 32, of Shadyside, poses for a portrait with the edible battery he designed at Carnegie Mellon University
Non-toxic, edible batteries could one day power ingestible devices for diagnosing and treating disease. One team reports new progress toward that goal with their batteries made with melanin pigments, naturally found in the skin, hair and eyes.
The researchers will present their work today at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world’s largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features more than 9,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.
“For decades, people have been envisioning that one day, we would have edible electronic devices to diagnose or treat disease,” says Christopher Bettinger, Ph.D. “But if you want to take a device every day, you have to think about toxicity issues. That’s when we have to think about biologically derived materials that could replace some of these things you might find in a RadioShack.”
About 20 years ago, scientists did develop a battery-operated ingestible camera as a complementary tool to endoscopies. It can image places in the digestive system that are inaccessible to the traditional endoscope. But it is designed to pass through the body and be excreted. For a single use, the risk that the camera with a conventional battery will get stuck in the gastrointestinal tract is small. But the chances of something going wrong would increase unacceptably if doctors wanted to use it more frequently on a single patient.
The camera and some implantable devices such as pacemakers run on batteries containing toxic components that are sequestered away from contact with the body. But for low-power, repeat applications such as drug-delivery devices that are meant to be swallowed, non-toxic and degradable batteries would be ideal.
“The beauty is that by definition an ingestible, degradable device is in the body for no longer than 20 hours or so,” Bettinger says. “Even if you have marginal performance, which we do, that’s all you need.”
While he doesn’t have to worry about longevity, toxicity is an issue. To minimize the potential harm of future ingestible devices, Bettinger’s team at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) decided to turn to melanins and other naturally occurring compounds. In our skin, hair and eyes, melanins absorb ultraviolet light to quench free radicals and protect us from damage. They also happen to bind and unbind metallic ions. “We thought, this is basically a battery,” Bettinger says.
Building on this idea, the researchers experimented with battery designs that use melanin pigments at either the positive or negative terminals; various electrode materials such as manganese oxide and sodium titanium phosphate; and cations such as copper and iron that the body uses for normal functioning.
“We found basically that they work,” says Hang-Ah Park, Ph.D., a post-doctoral researcher at CMU. “The exact numbers depend on the configuration, but as an example, we can power a 5 milliWatt device for up to 18 hours using 600 milligrams of active melanin material as a cathode.”
Although the capacity of a melanin battery is low relative to lithium-ion, it would be high enough to power an ingestible drug-delivery or sensing device. For example, Bettinger envisions using his group’s battery for sensing gut microbiome changes and responding with a release of medicine, or for delivering bursts of a vaccine over several hours before degrading.
In parallel with the melanin batteries, the team is also making edible batteries with other biomaterials such as pectin, a natural compound from plants used as a gelling agent in jams and jellies. Next, they plan on developing packaging materials that will safely deliver the battery to the stomach.
When these batteries will be incorporated into biomedical devices is uncertain, but Bettinger has already found another application for them. His lab uses the batteries to probe the structure and chemistry of the melanin pigments themselves to better understand how they work.
Read more: Battery you can swallow could enable future ingestible medical devices
The Latest on: Ingestible medical devices
[google_news title=”” keyword=”ingestible medical devices” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Ingestible medical devices
- Bungled EU medical device rules put lives at riskon March 17, 2023 at 7:19 pm
I didn't know where to go,” said Kenny, who works at a hospital in Dublin. The growing scarcity of medical devices across Europe is threatening many lifesaving medical procedures. The cause? The devil ...
- Ingestible Medical Devices Market Share from 2023 to 2028 | Comprehensive Industrial Analysis and Demand Projectionson March 17, 2023 at 1:12 am
Mar 17, 2023 (The Expresswire) -- "Final Report will add the analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on this industry." The “Ingestible Medical Devices ...
- Medical Devices News and Researchon March 16, 2023 at 5:00 pm
CÚRAM SFI Research Centre for Medical Devices researchers have published in Nature Communications a key study establishing a new pre-clinical model to develop clinically relevant treatments for ...
- Momentum grows to subject medical devices to medicine’s gold standard — the placebo treatmenton March 16, 2023 at 6:32 am
But for most medical devices, placebo trials have never been done. The most basic argument for this, put forth by medical device makers and regulators, is that mimicking an invasive procedure is ...
- Ingestible Sensor Market Is Expected To Grow At A CAGR Of 10.90% During Forecast Period 2023 To 2030 | Data By Contrive Datum Insights Pvt Ltd.on March 15, 2023 at 11:01 pm
The ingestible sensor market Size Was Valued At USD 819.0 Million In 2022 And Is Anticipated To Witness A CAGR Of 10.90% From 2023 To 2030. Many medical professionals, like physician's assistants, ...
- Ingestible Sensor Market Is Expected To Grow at a CAGR Of 10.90% during Forecast Period 2023 To 2030 | Data By Contrive Datum Insights Pvt Ltd.on March 15, 2023 at 4:59 pm
Many medical professionals, like physician's assistants, doctors, and nurses, use ingestible sensors to help them keep an eye on patients and make better diagnoses. These sensors also help the ...
- Learn the Basics of Medical Device Packagingon March 14, 2023 at 5:00 pm
Thankfully, the Medical Device Packaging Technical Committee (MDPTC) of the Institute of Packaging Professionals is here to help. This committee invested in developing Fundamentals of Medical Device ...
- The incredible, edible batteryon March 14, 2023 at 5:00 pm
Edible batteries one day could power ingestible medical devices designed to diagnose and treat health conditions, researchers told attendees and the press at the 252nd National Meeting and Exposition ...
- New MIT/Caltech Ingestible Sensor Could Help Doctors Pinpoint GI Difficultieson March 12, 2023 at 4:49 am
The sensor sends out its location as it moves through the GI tract, revealing where slowdowns in digestion may occur. Engineers at MIT and Caltech have demonstrated an ingestible sensor whose location ...
- New system is like 3D GPS for tracking pill cams through the GI tracton March 5, 2023 at 4:00 pm
Researchers in the US have developed a platform that allows wireless ingestible devices to be tracked in 3D as they travels through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, which may provide a cheaper ...
via Bing News