Technology Imitating Nature To Cure Diseases

Diabetes has become a very common disease these days. There are certain measures taken like the injection of insulin at proper intervals before or after meals. The patient has to be very careful. At this point the scientists started thinking as to what could they do to control diabetes artificially using some technological device.


Bionic Pancreas

Pantelis Georgiou and his fellow biomedical engineers at imperial college London decided to work on it. They started with a very basic question: What do the pancreas do to control the blood glucose level? The answer was so very known. The pancreas depends on two types of cells the alpha cells and the beta cells. When the glucose level in blood falls below a desired level the alpha cells secrete a hormone called glucagon which brings the glucose level back to the desired level. At times when the blood glucose level becomes higher than the normal the beta cells secrete insulin. Thus our blood glucose level is maintained. But for diabetes patients this does not happen as there is some malfunctioning of the hormones.

 

The patient having diabetes due to malfunctioning of the alpha cells is very much prone to cases of low blood sugar. Patient’s quality of life is severely affected by this. It may also lead to damages to heart, kidney and eyes . A patient with malfunctioning of beta cells is prone to high blood sugar which is also indeed harmful. The scientists tried to simulate both of these in microchip form. They thus produced an artificial pancreas which infact turns out to be more dependable than the original one.

The device consists of an electrochemical glucose sensor. This sensor penetrates the skin. It has a microchip with two small pumps for insulin and glucagon. Every 5 minutes the sensor checks the person’s glucose level. If it is higher than the normal level the silicon beta cell produces a signal that drives a motor. This motor injects a syringe of insulin from the pump. Thus the glucose level falls and as soon as the sensor detects the normal level the injection stops. Now if the blood glucose level becomes lower than the desired level, the alpha cells simulated on the microchip start working and thus there is injection of glucagon, till the glucose level is maintained. The alpha cells react in spikes. Whenever the concentration falls below a particular desired value, the electrical potential across the cell’s membrane rapidly changes a produces a spike of glucagon. The beta cells react in bursts of voltage spikes. If the level becomes higher than the expected value it releases insulin all together for say 10 seconds in a burst to maintain the blood glucose level.

Thus technology has started to imitate nature and is infact inventing devices that perform the work of the natural organs and infact have more fidelity to the real organ itself.