Wide dipole antennas for wireless powering of miniaturised bioelectronic devices

Wireless Power Delivery Techniques for Miniature Implantable Bioelectronics

Progress in implanted bioelectronic technology offers the opportunity to develop more effective tools for personalized electronic medicine. While there are numerous clinical and pre-clinical applications for these devices, power delivery to these systems can be challenging. Wireless battery-free devices offer advantages such as a smaller and lighter device footprint and reduced failures and infections by eliminating lead wires. However, with the development of wireless technologies, there are fundamental tradeoffs between five essential factors: power, miniaturization, depth, alignment tolerance, and transmitter distance, while still allowing devices to work within safety limits. These tradeoffs mean that multiple forms of wireless power transfer are necessary for different devices to best meet the needs for a given biological target. Here six different types of wireless power transfer technologies used in bioelectronic implants-inductive coupling, radio frequency, mid-field, ultrasound, magnetoelectrics, and light-are reviewed in context of the five tradeoffs listed above. This core group of wireless power modalities is then used to suggest possible future bioelectronic technologies and their biological applications.

Clinical Potential of Nerve Input to Tumors: A Bioelectricity Perspective

We support the notion that the neural connections of the tumor microenvironment (TME) and the associated 'bioelectricity' play significant role in the pathophysiology of cancer. In several cancers, the nerve input promotes the cancer process. While straightforward surgical denervation of tumors, therefore, could improve prognosis, resulting side effects of such a procedure would be unpredictable and irreversible. On the other hand, tumor innervation can be manipulated effectively for therapeutic purposes by alternative novel approaches broadly termed "electroceuticals." In this perspective, we evaluate the clinical potential of targeting the TME first through manipulation of the nerve input itself and second by application of electric fields directly to the tumor. The former encompasses several different biophysical and biochemical approaches. These include implantable devices, nanoparticles, and electroactive polymers, as well as optogenetics and chemogenetics. As regard bioelectrical manipulation of the tumor itself, the "tumor-treating field" technique, applied to gliomas commonly in combination with chemotherapy, is evaluated. Also, as electroceuticals, drugs acting on ion channels and neurotransmitter receptors are highlighted for completeness. It is concluded, first, that electroceuticals comprise a broad range of biomedical tools. Second, such electroceuticals present significant clinical potential for exploiting the neural component of the TME as a strategy against cancer. Finally, the inherent bioelectric characteristics of tumors themselves are also amenable to complementary approaches. Collectively, these represent an evolving, dynamic field and further progress and applications can be expected to follow both conceptually and technically.

Analysis of the capacitance of minimally insulated parallel wires implanted in biological tissue

State of the art bioelectronic implants are using thin cables for therapeutic electrical stimulation. If cable insulation is thin, biological tissue surrounding cables can be unintentionally stimulated. The capacitance of the cable must be much less than the stimulating electrodes to ensure stimulating currents are delivered to the electrode-tissue interface. This work derives and experimentally validates a model to determine the capacitance of parallel cables implanted in biological tissue. Biological tissue has a high relative permittivity, so the capacitance of cabling implanted in the human body depends on cable insulation thickness. Simulations and measurements demonstrate that insulation thickness influences the capacitance of implanted parallel cables across almost two orders of magnitude: from 20 pF/m to 700 pF/m. The results are verified using four different methods: solving the Laplacian numerically from first principles, using a commercially available electrostatic solver, and measuring twelve different parallel pairs of wires using two different potentiostats. Cable capacitance simulations and measurements are performed in air, a porcine blood pool and porcine muscle tissue. The results do not differ by more than 30% for a given cable across simulation and measurement methodologies. The modelling in this work can be used to design cabling for minimally-invasive biomedical implants.