AAAS NEWS
MEDICAL DIAGNOSTICS Brain sensor stops seizures CATH O’DRISCOLL
Epileptic seizures could one day be stopped in their tracks – or even prevented before they have got started, researchers reported at the AAAS meeting in Austin, Texas, in February 2018. This is due to novel sensor technology capable of detecting and treating these debilitating events right at the spot inside the brain where they occur, pictured right. Roughly 30% of epileptic
seizures don’t respond to drugs and, in severe cases, surgery is often required to remove a portion of the brain thought to be involved in the condition. Now, George Malliaras, Prince Philip professor of technology at the University of Cambridge, UK, claims to have developed a microscopic brain sensor capable not only of pinpointing when the seizure starts, but also of delivering antiepileptic drugs to treat the problem directly on site. The technology should solve
a longstanding problem for epilepsy treatment, Malliaras believes, by opening up the possibility of using a much wider range of drugs. Traditional antiepileptics have needed to cross the blood brain barrier (BBB) in order to be effective, he explained, which severely limits the number of treatment options.
INNOVATION Atlas to speed science CATH O’DRISCOLL
The human body contains in the order of 37 trillion cells. That puts the Human Cell Atlas project well ahead of The Human Genome project – which identified around 25, 000 human genes – in terms of its complexity, according to Rockefeller University professor Cori Bargmann. Once complete, it promises to
dramatically speed progress in the biomedical sciences by mapping all of the different cell types in the body. One of the most difficult challenges will be to develop suitable computational data
analysis and visualisation tools. Cell typing can’t be precise, Bargmann explained, as cell types differ in men and women, and over the course of their lifetimes. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, created
in late 2016 by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, the paediatrician Priscilla Chan, is one of several organisations supporting the Atlas project. It was selected for funding because of its impact to accelerate research, explained Bargmann, who is also president of Chan Zuckerberg Science.
The initiative’s mission is ambitious: to ‘cure, prevent or manage all diseases by the
end of the current century’. Other funding is also going to support an
open access bioarchive of biomedical papers that encourages researchers to share their results faster before publication, she said – something physicists have been doing for the past 20 years. ‘There are thousands of new research publications every year. I can’t read all of them and neither can anyone else.’
The money will help to support a team of multidisciplinary staff engaged in figuring out algorithms that will alert individual researchers to the papers that may be of most interest to them.
And the new precision delivery technology also means lower doses will be required, with fewer side effects. Tests on rodents showed that implanting the sensor close to a brain region called the hippocampus could stop a seizure after it started, Malliaras reported. Applying an electrical potential to release the drug before seizure started stopped it from happening altogether. ‘On the one hand, the [device]
outlet delivers the drug, and on the other hand, the device detects the seizure via the
electrode,’ he elaborated. Device details are not being
released until the research has been published. However, Malliaras revealed that the sensor comprises an organic electrode to measure electric activity in the brain combined with enzymes to monitor important metabolic changes associated with epilepsy seizures. ‘With this technology we
can follow the electrical activity during seizures. At the same time we can measure the production of lactate [which increases during seizures],’ he
said, also referring to another interesting observation that lactate concentration appears to decrease slightly just before a seizure event. Antiepileptic drugs contained in a device reservoir can be released simply by applying a voltage to switch the device on or off as and when needed. Malliaras’ own new sensing and drug delivery device is still a few years away from the clinic. However, other organic electrodes – also being developed by researchers in the universities of Columbia and San Diego – are already being used to monitor electrical activity in the brains of epilepsy patients in a number of US clinics, he pointed out, while clinics in the EU are ‘finalising the paperwork’ to follow suit. Compared with traditional inorganic electrodes, organic materials offer a much- enhanced 3D brain-electronic interface and performance, he says. Other applications for the
technology are also in the pipeline. ‘Bypassing the BBB can have many applications,’ Malliaras enthuses. ‘We are currently beginning to explore the potential of these devices to provide localised chemotherapy in the case of hard to treat cancers in the brain.’
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