An electronic pill to regulate appetite

The laboratory of Giovanni Traverso, gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor at MIT in Boston, has come up with another one. Traverso’s team, known for the production of biotech pills, has just announced the creation of a new ingestible pill which, by electrically stimulating the cells of the stomach, is able to influence the release of hormones that regulate appetite, such as ghrelin. And that for this could help combat nausea, cachexia due to various conditions, and eating disorders.

A pill inspired by an Australian lizard

The idea of ​​Traverso and colleagues – who in the past have worked on pills for the gradual release of HIV drugs or contraceptives, as well as robot pills for insulin release – this time takes its cue from a rather bizarre animal, the thorny devil, a lizard covered with spines that are nothing more than a strategy to survive in the arid Australian deserts. In fact, these spines create grooves that capture and convey the water, when available, right up to the mouth. But why copy its structure in a pill? The idea, they explain from MIT, was to mimic this structure – creating a pill with grooves – to absorb the fluid from the stomach walls, thus favoring contact with the electrodes and electrical stimulation. The principle of FLASH – as the capsule was renamed, from fluid-wicking capsules for active stimulation and hormone modulation – is that, by electrically stimulating the walls of the stomach, it manages to activate the release of ghrelin (the hormone that stimulates appetite) through the action of the vagus nerve, which connects the digestive system and the brain. Tested for now on pigs, it works (it stimulates the stomach for about twenty minutes) and is safe (it is excreted without problems), and in the near future it will also be tested in humans. It is large, to be clear, a few millimeters, about 10 by 15mm.

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by Irma D’Aria

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Electronic pill, possible applications

“”Electroceuticals, or electrical stimulation therapies, are becoming the next frontier in neuromodulation,” said Khalil Ramadi of NYU Abu Dhabi, co-lead author of the pill paper with MIT’s James McRae, in Science Robotics: “FLASH is one of the first ingestible electroceuticals capable of regulating certain neurohormonal circuits, while avoiding the discomfort patients may experience with invasive treatments. Future ingestible electroceutical systems could be designed and customized in specific fields beyond short-term acute gastric stimulation.”

They could, for example, be used to treat metabolic and gastrointestinal disorders, or as support in cancer-related cachexia conditions, and in cases of anorexia. More generally, it could be used to regulate the hormones that control hunger and satiety, also acting in different locations, concludes Traverso: “Here we have brought an example of how we are able to interact with the stomach lining and release hormones, but we expect that this may also work in other parts of the gastrointestinal tract that we haven’t explored yet.”