The rise of bioelectric medicine sparks interest among researchers, patients, and industry

Abstract

In the corner of Kevin Tracey’s office, behind a long shelf lined with medical books, rests “Rosie,” a pink cane adorned with roses. It once belonged to Kelly Owens, who spent her teens and 20s crippled by inflammatory arthritis and Crohn’s disease. Today, she no longer needs Rosie’s help. Silicon wafers of thin-film microfabricated electrodes can be implanted into a patient to record from or stimulate the nervous system—the vagus nerve in particular. Image credit: The Feinstein Institutes for Medicine Research. The turning point for Owens came just over two years ago when a research team implanted a small device inside her chest to stimulate her vagus nerve. She celebrated two years of clinical remission last month. “I used to have to think about every movement my body was making, whether washing a dish or putting on a shirt on or bending my arms enough to put on deodorant,” says Owens, who recently gifted the cane as a thank you to Tracey. “My life is so normal now.” Hundreds of clinical trials are now underway to investigate how harnessing the body’s peripheral wiring might help broadly in the treatment of acute and chronic disease. The results so far appear promising. “I hope many more people will benefit like Owens has,” says Tracey, president and CEO of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York and a pioneer in the field of bioelectronic medicine. That field, which also goes by neuromodulation, biostimulation, or electroceuticals, is emerging as an alternative or add-on to costly chemical and biologic drugs. Dysfunctional neural circuits give rise to dysfunctional organs. The goal of bioelectronic medicine is to restore healthy patterns of electrical impulses—adjusting how neurons fire and, thereby, changing the concentrations of neurotransmitters traveling through those circuits. Driving growth in bioelectronic medicine is a convergence …