Put a sock on it. A silicone sheath could one day be slipped over your organs to monitor health and treat disease. The prototype is the first bendy implant that can cover the entire surface of an organ.
To make it, John Rogers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his colleagues embedded 68 tiny sensors into a sheet of silicone that they fitted around a 3D printed replica of a rabbit heart. They then transferred this to a rabbit heart kept beating outside the animal's body (see video). Getting the pressure absolutely right was important, because pushing too hard on the heart can disrupt a heartbeat.
Comparing information from sensors on the sock to that captured by various imaging methods showed that the sensors could accurately detect physical properties such as the temperature, electrical activity and pH in different regions of the organ.
Because the sock completely surrounds the heart and can be designed to include electrodes that stimulate the heart, it could be used as an alternative to a pacemaker to help regulate heartbeat.
Roger's team is also looking at how to make both the sock and the electronics embedded in it dissolve when the implant is no longer needed.
Although human trials are a long way off, the team plans to start animal trials in a few months time. A big challenge will be how to power the electronics embedded in the membrane. "You have a beautiful spiderweb mesh of devices but you have to get power in and out to activate them," says Rogers. One option would be to have microscale batteries embedded in the device, another would be to have power transmitted wirelessly from a source outside the body.
Christopher Bettinger, a biomedical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University at Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, who is working on edible electronics, describes the work as an exciting demonstration of how you can use silicone to bridge the divide between the organic and the artificial. "The flexible electronic devices could be used to record vital data during surgical procedures," he suggests.
The team is already looking at how to adapt the system for other organs, including the brain. It should be relatively easy to thread the membrane around a heart during surgery, but the space around the brain is more cramped, making it harder to envelop. Surrounding it partially could still be useful. "Whether you exploit it in full 3D or not, being able to curve around a surface is very valuable," says Rogers. "The idea could be applied to any organ."
Journal reference: Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4329
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