An enterprising team of scientists in Abu Dhabi have harnessed cutting-edge technology in a long-term quest to provide patients with a "holy grail" alternative to hugely popular weight-loss drugs.
The researchers from New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have developed a tiny ingestible device that emits light and, in doing so, could stimulate nerve cells or neurons in the gut, potentially altering which nutrients are absorbed or affecting whether a person feels hungry.
A study in which the tiny LED devices - made with 3D printing - are tested on rats has just been released in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies.
Dr Khalil Ramadi, an assistant professor of bioengineering at NYUAD, who heads the team behind the study, said that using such capsules to manipulate appetite in people was a long-term goal for researchers.
“That’s very much a holy grail of people working on these ingestible devices – to be able to have the next Ozempic buster,” Dr Ramadi, referring to the popular weight-loss drug, told The National.
“We are not there yet, but there are some pretty promising results coming out that suggest that it's within the realm of possibility.”
In the work at the university, rats are fed the capsules, which are then activated to produce light by a wireless mechanism involving a magnetic field, similar to using a wireless charger with a mobile phone.
If the LED devices were being used to influence appetite or absorption in the gut, then certain nerve cells in the gut could have been made light sensitive through genetic manipulation. Switching on the light would then activate the cells.
The sensitivity to light could have been induced by using tiny circular pieces of DNA called plasmids to insert genetic material into the cells.
This was not done during the Abu Dhabi research, but such work is widespread in other laboratories and is part of the emerging field of “optogenetics”, which combines the effects of light and genetics to manipulate cells.
Using the capsules and while also genetically manipulating gut cells to become light sensitive is a potential next step for the researchers.
After being switched on so that they produce light, the LED capsules are expelled by the rats when they defecate.
Gut feeling
One potential real-world use of similar technology in people would be to make the gut contract faster, if an individual has constipation. Weight-control applications may be of even greater interest.
“Could we selectively uptake certain nutrients from food and not others? Can we artificially increase or decrease hunger depending on what diseases we might be looking at?” Dr Ramadi asks.
The experimental work is carried out with rats and mice, Dr Ramadi said, so that the biological effects of the capsules can be better understood.
Parallel to its work on micro-scale devices used with rodents, Dr Ramadi’s group also researches human-scale applications of the technology.
Indeed researchers at many institutions have developed similar LED capsules that humans could ingest and that pass through the digestive system before being expelled when a person goes to the toilet, but these are powered by batteries.
Magnetic attraction
The researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi hope that their work on small capsules powered by magnetic fields could lead to new ways to power human ingestible LED devices that do not require the use of batteries.
When it comes to finding the ideal way to power human-scale devices, Dr Ramadi said that “the jury is still out”.
Dr Ramadi, who is from the US and who has spent five years at NYU Abu Dhabi, said that he and his co-researchers were “really excited” about the potential of their capsules.
“You essentially have a way to transfer power to a really small component and then you can do different things with that power: you can shine an LED, you can activate a switch, you could release a drug. That’s a platform for other things,” he said.
As well as Dr Ramadi, who is the director of NYU Abu Dhabi’s Laboratory for Advanced Neuroengineering and Translational Medicine, the new paper has been written by nine other scientists at NYU Abu Dhabi, including Dr Mohamed Elsherif, the lead author.
Dr Elsherif said in a statement that the capsule enabled analysis that was not possible with alternative methods involving more invasive approaches. Such invasive methods can involve implanting optical fibres using surgery.
“What makes this capsule unique is that it was entirely fabricated in-house using 3D printing, without the need for cleanroom facilities,” he said.
Ozempic, which is injected, is one of the key new drugs being used to help weight loss. It was developed to treat type 2 diabetes, but it is proving effective at helping people to lose weight through its ability to regulate appetite, something that capsules of the kind being developed at NYU Abu Dhabi could eventually do in people.
