Artist’s rendering of the sensor implanted into a rat’s brain.UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, JULIE MCMAHONResearchers in the U.S. and Korea have created tiny bioresorbing brain implants that are naturally degraded by the body after a few weeks of functioning, eliminating the need for retrieval, according to a paper published earlier this week (January 18) in Nature.
“This is a new class of electronic biomedical implants,” said coauthor John Rogers of the University of Illinois in a press release. “These kinds of systems have potential across a range of clinical practices, where therapeutic or monitoring devices are implanted or ingested.”
While current electronic implants used to monitor or treat medical conditions inside a patient’s body can cause inflammation or infection, the new silicon-based device is made entirely of inexpensive, biodegradable materials designed to be dissolved in the body after the sensor’s job is done.
“The ultimate strategy is to have a device that you can place in the brain—or in other organs in the body—that is entirely implanted, intimately connected with the organ you want to monitor, and can transmit signals wirelessly ...
