Sounds unlikely, until you visit Charles Lieber’s lab.
Led by Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry, an international team of researchers has developed a method of fabricating nanoscale electronic scaffolds that can be injected via syringe. The scaffolds can then be connected to devices and used to monitor neural activity, stimulate tissues, or even promote regeneration of neurons. The research is described in a June 8 paper in Nature Nanotechnology.
Contributors to the work include Jia Liu,
«I do feel that this has the potential to be revolutionary," said Lieber, who holds a joint appointment in the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. «This opens up a completely new frontier where we can explore the interface between electronic structures and biology. For the past 30 years, people have made incremental improvements in
In an earlier study, scientists in Lieber’s lab demonstrated that cardiac or nerve cells grown with embedded scaffolds could be used to create «cyborg» tissue. Researchers were then able to record electrical signals generated by the tissue, and to measure changes in those signals as they administered cardio- or
«We were able to demonstrate that we could make this scaffold and culture cells within it, but we didn’t really have an idea how to insert that into
Though not the first attempt at implanting electronics into the brain — deep brain stimulation has been used to treat a variety of disorders for decades — the nanofabricated scaffolds operate on a completely different scale.
«Existing techniques are crude relative to the way the brain is wired," Lieber said. «Whether it’s a silicon probe or flexible polymers… they cause inflammation in the tissue that requires periodically changing the position or the stimulation.
«But with our injectable electronics, it’s as if it’s not there at all. They are one million times more flexible than any state-
The process for fabricating the scaffolds is similar to that used to etch microchips, and begins with a dissolvable layer deposited on a substrate. To create the scaffold, researchers lay out a mesh of nanowires sandwiched in layers of organic polymer. The first layer is then dissolved, leaving the flexible mesh, which can be drawn into a needle and administered like any other injection.
The
«These type of things have never been done before, from both a fundamental neuroscience and medical perspective," Lieber said. «It’s really exciting — there are a lot of potential applications.»
Going forward, researchers hope to better understand how the body reacts to the injectable electronics over longer periods.
Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has filed for a provisional patent on the technology and is actively seeking commercialization opportunities.
«The idea of being able to precisely position and record from very specific areas, or even from specific neurons over an extended period of time — this could, I think, make a huge impact on neuroscience," Lieber said.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/06/injectable-electronics-promise-sharper-
