Wireless Implant Slips Drugs into the Brain

Jul-22-15 A wireless implant that can release drugs via remote control could offer a new way to slip medications past the blood-brain barrier.

Developed by teams from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the flexible device is equipped with a tiny LED light and four chambers that hold the drugs. At about the width of a human hair, the implant device is soft enough to slip into the brain without causing damage, where it can unload its payload of drugs when triggered by infrared light.

The device could be particularly interesting in clinical studies on live animals, allowing researchers to influence an animal’s behavior remotely as they study the effects of drugs or light on different parts of the brain.

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[MEDGADGET.COM]
[NEWS.WUSTL.EDU]

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