Weight loss cure: Obesity and diabetes implant receives up to $34 million

The rate of obesity is growing among children and adolescents faster than adults, according to the study carried out with the World Health Organization – Copyright AFP/File Rodrigo Oropeza, CLAUDIO CRUZ

Eliminating the need for injections, a new implant has been designed to autonomously deliver medicine. With this innovation, from Northwestern University, living, engineered cells within the device will generate personalized therapies for patients. The key advantage is that with the minimally invasive implant, this will eliminate the need for daily or weekly injections. The inventors have dubbed the device a ‘living pharmacy’.

The primary focus is with diabetes and obesity. However, moving forward other ‘living pharmacy’ implants are in development to control the body’s sleep-wake cycles and to autonomously sense and treat cancer.

The implant is a type of bioelectronic device. As well as adjustable therapy delivery, the device is capable of dynamic monitoring, and reduced biologics healthcare costs.

Bioelectronic devices include implantable sensors and electrodes. Such devices take advantage of new materials, device designs and fabrication strategies to enable new and improved biomedical applications.

Northwestern University has received $34 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to fast-track the development of a low-cost bioelectronic implant to treat patients with obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

ARPA-H is a new federal funding agency that supports research with “the potential to transform entire areas of medicine and health.”

This funding is intended to support a six-year effort to develop and test “Rx On-site Generation Using Electronics” (ROGUE), an implantable device that will deliver a biological therapy on demand to treat obesity and Type 2 diabetes.  ROGUE is funded under ARPA-H’s REACT program.

Measuring just a few millimetres in diameter, the implant houses living engineered cells. These cells synthesize and deliver the therapy when needed.

According to Northwestern’s Jonathan Rivnay: “This work builds on the biohybrid work seeded at Northwestern, where we are making regulated therapies based on engineered cell factories that can be controlled and maintained by a bioelectronic device. In this work, we aim to develop a minimally invasive living device that can be implanted under the skin and can deliver personalized and regulated therapies.”