Using light to help break down ingestible medical devices

MIT engineers demonstrated a bariatric balloon that can be inflated in the stomach and then degraded by shining light on the seal, which is made of a novel light-sensitive polymer.

Image: Ritu Raman

Article Highlights

New light-sensitive material could eliminate some of the endoscopic procedures needed to remove gastrointestinal devices
A variety of medical devices can be inserted into the gastrointestinal tract to treat, diagnose, or monitor GI disorders. Many of these have to be removed by endoscopic surgery once their job is done. However, MIT engineers have now come up with a way to trigger such devices to break down inside the body when they are exposed to light from an ingestible LED
The new approach is based on a light-sensitive hydrogel that the researchers designed. Incorporating this material into medical devices could avoid many endoscopic procedures and would give doctors a faster and easier way to remove devices when they are no longer needed or are not functioning properly, the researchers say
“We are developing a set of systems that can reside in the gastrointestinal tract, and as part of that, we’re looking to develop different ways in which we can trigger the disassembly of devices in the GI tract without the requirement for a major procedure,” says Giovanni Traverso, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the senior author of the study
In a study in pigs, the researchers showed that devices made with this light-sensitive hydrogel can be triggered to break down after being exposed to blue or ultraviolet light from a small LED.
The material’s properties can be tuned by varying the composition of the gel. When the light-sensitive linker makes up a higher percentage of the material, it breaks down faster in response to light but is also mechanically weaker. The researchers can also control how long it takes to break down the material by using different wavelengths of light. Blue light works more slowly but poses less risk to cells that are sensitive to damage from ultraviolet light
In addition to those two applications, this approach could be used to create other kinds of degradable devices, such as vehicles for delivering drugs to the gastrointestinal tract, according to the researchers

The Complete Story: Ingestible medical devices can be broken down with light

Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Brigham and Women’s Hospital

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