Researchers Use Silk to Treat Infections Wirelessly

Researchers from Tufts University and the University of Illinois have successfully eliminated bacterial infections using a wireless signal.

The team embedded electronic implants into mice that, when triggered, delivered heat to staph-infected tissue, according to the Daily Mail. Twenty-four hours after treatment, all signs of infection were gone, and 15 days later, the device dissolved. The treatment, which also eliminated E. coli bacteria, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The device was made of silk — a material Tufts researchers had already validated in 2012. Silk was wrapped around each heating device, which featured a resistor and power-receiving coil made of magnesium, and is what controlled the device’s dissolution time. Because the devices can dissolve, the team’s discovery can help eliminate agonizing, expensive implant removal or replacement. As Tufts Professor Fiorenzo Omenetto explained to the Daily Mail, “This is an important demonstration step forward for the development of on-demand medical devices that can be turned on remotely to perform a therapeutic function in a patient and then safely disappear after their use, requiring no retrieval.”

These wireless strategies could help manage post-surgical infection, for example, or pave the way for eventual Wi-Fi drug delivery. In the past, Omenetto has hinted at the impact transient electronics could have outside of the medical field, referring to computers and smartphones instead. The environmental benefits could be huge if cell phones, as suggested by Omenetto, “could just dissolve instead of languishing in landfills for years.”

Omenetto has already used silk to create a smartphone scan that can detect spoiled food as well as technology that stabilizes vaccines, which has been commercialized by Cambridge, Mass.-based life sciences firm Vaxess Technologies.

Perhaps a silk-spun future isn’t too far off after all.