Three-in-one ‘living pharmacy’ implant produces multiple drugs inside the body
A novel device that uses engineered cells to produce multiple therapies inside the body at once shows promise in animal models.
A multi-institutional team of scientists, co-led by Northwestern University (Il, USA), Rice University (TX, USA) and Carnegie Mellon University (PA, USA), has created a fully implantable, subcutaneous device that produces local oxygen and is capable of housing a high density of biologic-producing cells – aka a ‘living pharmacy’. The team engineered the platform to produce three different medicines inside the body and hopes that, one day, it could be expanded to target a variety of diseases and cell types with a single, long-lasting therapy.
Biologics have shown promise in the treatment of numerous diseases, including cancer, neurological disorders, autoimmune syndromes, and diabetes. Advances in cell therapy have resulted in biologic producing cells that can be implanted in vivo, facilitating a move for biologic production from the factory to inside patients, providing sustained delivery of therapeutics that lasts for years and bypasses the need for repeat injections.
To maximize the efficiency of these tiny cellular factories, researchers are looking to miniaturize and compact the cells into a single device; however, they face a stubborn barrier in the form of oxygen availability. While the subcutaneous space presents a convenient location for implantation, oxygen is limited, meaning engineered cells must compete for the meager supply, and many die. This restricts how much medicine the system can produce and, therefore, hinders the success of cell therapies.
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With their new device, the team behind the latest study hopes to solve this problem. Building on a previous study, in which scientists designed technology that generated oxygen by splitting nearby water molecules, they created HOBIT – the hybrid oxygenation bioelectronics system for implanted therapy. HOBIT is a wireless, fully implantable platform that produces oxygen at the site of implantation, right where the cells need it, enabling a greater density of cells in the subcutaneous space.
Roughly the size of a folded stick of gum, the system comprises three main components: a chamber to hold genetically engineered cells, a mini oxygen generator and electronics to regulate oxygen production and communicate with external devices.
The team tested HOBIT in vivo in rodent models, engineering cells to produce three different biologics, each with different half lives: an anti-HIV antibody, a GLP-1-like peptide used to treat type 2 diabetes and the hormone leptin, which regulates appetite and metabolism. They then implanted the devices under the skin of rats and monitored the levels of each drug in the animals’ blood.
In animals with oxygenated implants, all three medicines were viable for the duration of the 31-day study period, something that was not reflected in control groups involving non-oxygenated implants.
The findings demonstrate how the technology has the potential to serve as a platform for cell therapy, simultaneously delivering multiple different biologics at clinically relevant doses with minimally invasive implants.
“This work highlights the broad potential of a fully integrated biohybrid platform for treating disease,” summarized Jonathan Rivnay, a co-principal investigator of the project.
“We’re beginning to see how bioelectronics and cell therapy can work together in a single platform. As these technologies continue to develop, devices like this could eventually act as programmable drug factories inside the body – delivering complex therapies in ways that simply aren’t possible today.”