Implanted microLED devices light up, activating peripheral nerve cells in mice. The devices are being developed and studied by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a potential treatment for pain that does not respond to other therapies. Credit: Gereau lab/Washington University
Building on wireless technology that has the potential to interfere with pain, scientists have developed flexible, implantable devices that can activate – and, in theory, block – pain signals in the body and spinal cord before those signals reach the brain. The implants one day may be used in different parts of the body to fight pain that doesn’t respond to other therapies.
“Our eventual goal is to use this technology to treat pain in very specific locations by providing a kind of ‘switch’ to turn off the pain signals long before they reach the brain,” said Robert W. Gereau IV, PhD. As the devices are soft and stretchable, they can be implanted into parts of the body that move. The devices previously developed had to be anchored to bone.
The new devices are held in place with sutures. Like the previous models, they contain microLED lights that can activate specific nerve cells.
They experimented with mice that were genetically engineered to have light-sensitive proteins on some of their nerve cells. To demonstrate that the implants could influence the pain pathway in nerve cells, the researchers activated a pain response with light. When the mice walked through a specific area in a maze, the implanted devices lit up and caused the mice to feel discomfort. Upon leaving that part of the maze, the devices turned off, and the discomfort dissipated. So they quickly learned to avoid that part of the maze.
They have potential uses in or around the bladder, stomach, intestines, heart or other organs. https://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/Implantable-wireless-devices-trigger-and-may-block-pain-signals.aspx
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