Medicine in the future could be electrifying

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UNTIL now, the pharmaceutical industry has been based on chemistry and biology. Patients are treated with drugs that work through biochemical interactions with the body’s molecular pathways.

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Now UK pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is pioneering a different approach: bioelectronics, or electroceuticals.

These aim to turn people’s electrical impulses into a mainstay of medical treatment.

Kris Famm, head of bioelectronics research at GSK, says scientists are learning how the electrical language of the body controls human organs in order to provide precision therapies.

The company has established a global network of about 50 research collaborations, and seen remarkable results through animal testing in a range of diseases, Famm says.

“We believe a future where clinicians are administering bioelectronic medicines as well as molecular ones is approaching,” he adds.

“Our next challenge is to build the tiny devices that will deliver these interventions and to prove they bring transformational treatments for patients.”

The most high-profile research connecting electronics to people involves the human brain.

Neurotechnology projects enabling disabled people to control bionic limbs by thought and prosthetic implants that reconstruct damaged brain circuits have received much publicity.

However, bioelectronics research is focusing less on the central nervous system than on the peripheral nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, which influence the function of every organ.

Doug Weber, who runs the ElectRx programme at the US’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), says the peripheral nervous system is the “body’s information superhighway”, communicating an array of signals that monitor our health and effect changes in brain and organ functions.

A well-established example is the pacemaker, which stimulates the heart to beat at a healthy rate.

The aim of researchers is to develop more sophisticated devices programmed to read and correct the electrical signals that pass along the nerves, to treat conditions as diverse as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, asthma, hypertension, and diabetes.

It may even be possible to use peripheral nerve stimulation to tackle disorders rooted in the brain, according to Darpa, for instance by reducing the body’s overproduction of inflammatory molecules that are implicated in several neurological diseases.

One of the first companies to specialise in bioelectronics was SetPoint Medical, based in California. It was also the first to receive money from the $50m Action Potential Venture Capital Fund GSK set up in 2013 to invest in companies developing bioelectronic technologies.

The fund has invested in five companies so far. Moncef Slaoui, GSK’s head of vaccines, says: “We see the development of bioelectronic medicines as a collaborative process that will only be successful with the combined skills of world-leading engineers, physiologists, neuroscientists, and informatics experts.”

SetPoint is in early clinical trials with a device that stimulates the vagus nerve, the body’s longest individual nerve, which extends from the brain stem to the abdomen, by way of organs such as the heart, oesophagus, and lungs.

This exerts an anti-inflammatory effect, SetPoint says, that will help rheumatoid arthritis patients and those suffering from Crohn’s disease, caused by inflammation in the digestive tract.

EnteroMedics, based in Minnesota, has a more advanced clinical programme also targeting the vagus nerve. Results suggest that intermittently blocking the nerve with high-frequency electrical impulses can help obese people lose weight by reducing their appetite.

Most bioelectronic research is still at the stage of animal experimentation. The aim of scientists is to develop ultra-specific bioelectronic products that work without any of the unwanted side effects of today’s drugs.

Or, as GlaxoSmithKline puts it: “To have the first medicine that speaks the electrical language of our body ready for approval by the end of this decade.”

(c) Financial Times Limited 2016

Babatunde Akinsola
Babatunde Akinsolahttps://naija247news.com
Babatunde Akinsola is aNaija247news' Southwest editor. He's based in Lagos and writes on the Yoruba Nation political issues, news and investigative reports

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