Silk-based implantable electronic devices to detect biomarkers, coming soon
Diseases like diabetes and cancer are very difficult to monitor, even continuous monitoring cannot relay all important and needed information each time. This is exactly why researchers and scientists from around the world are desperately trying to build implantable electronics to monitor around the clock transformations in the body. Latest and very exciting new information of an implantable device comes from Tufts University, where professor Fiorenzo Omenetto is developing implants made from silicon and sheets of silk which dissolve away (within the body) when no longer need – something that weighs heavier on previously developed implants which have to be removed making incisions. Video.
Being created in collaboration with David Kaplan and materials scientist John Rogers at the University of Illinois, the silk implant will act as a combination vital-sign monitor, blood tester, imaging center, and pharmacy, providing detailed and clear picture of what’s going on inside the body, continuously. Here the researchers are working on holding flexible silicon electronics in place with silk films, so that this flexibility and biodegradable nature of silk can be used in incorporating antibodies or enzymes into the film, thus allowing the devices to detect biomarkers. The future of medical science is surely in for a transformation, if something with this functionality can be brought past the animal experiments to human use.
Via: TechnologyReview
