November 5, 2024


A revolutionary device designed to transform the surgical treatment of brain tumors is set to have its first clinical trial in what scientists say could be a major medical breakthrough.

The brain chip can detect cancer cells by differences in their electrical emissions compared to that of healthy neural tissue.

The size of a postage stamp, the device is made of graphene, a material 200 times stronger than steel and only one atom thick. Graphene was invented 20 years ago by scientists from Manchester University Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who later won the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for their research.

Since then, scientists have worked to exploit the remarkable conductive properties of graphene to develop new electrical and magnetic sensors and other devices. However, the flexible brain chip – which is now being tested at Salford Royal Hospital – is considered a medical first. “This is the first ever clinical trial conducted anywhere in the world with a graphene-based medical device,” said one of the team’s leaders, Kostas Kostarelos, a professor of nanomedicine at Manchester.

The brain-computer interface (BCI) device was designed and manufactured by an international team of scientists to transform the monitoring of electrical impulses from cells in the brain using previously undetectable frequencies. “Its first use will be to distinguish cancer cells from healthy cells to ensure that surgery is targeted at brain tumors in a highly accurate way,” Kostarelos said.

Such a goal is crucial, doctors point out. More than 12,700 people are diagnosed with brain tumors in the UK each year and more than 5,000 annual deaths are attributed to the condition. “Anything we can do to improve these rates will be a great achievement,” he added.

However, the team behind the BCI device also believe it will help scientists study many other conditions – including stroke and epilepsy – by giving them a much greater understanding of how electrical signals are transmitted by healthy cells, compared to cells damaged by pathological conditions are affected.

“This is a clinical milestone that paves the way for advances in both neural decoding and its application as a therapeutic intervention,” said Carolina Aguilar, co-founder of Inbrain Neuroelectronics, the global spin-off company founded to advance the use of graphene in brain research. and treatment.

Cells in the brain interact by exchanging electrical impulses, a process that underlies our thoughts, behavior and perceptions of the world. Yet monitoring exactly how these cells communicate in this way has been a major headache for scientists. “We can study some electrical signals sent out by brain cells. However, those of very low and very high frequency are very difficult to detect in the living brain,” Kostarelos said.

“Only those in mid-range frequencies can currently be monitored. The BCI chip can determine a wide variety of electrical signals in the brain, including those of very high and very low frequencies.

To use the device, a piece of a patient’s skull is removed and the tiny wafer-thin chip – which has thousands of electrical contacts – is placed on top of their brain. Transmitters send out electrical signals to stimulate the brain’s cells and the tiny receivers pick up their responses.

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“Cancer cells do not respond to electrical stimulation caused by the chip, unlike host neuron cells,” Kostarelos said.

“This allows a surgical team to identify neurons very close to a tumor and this is extremely important. If a tumor is located in parts of the brain, such as those involved in speech, the team will have to be especially careful. Guided by the signals from the graphene chip, they can remove the diseased cells with more precision and confidence.”

The ability of the BCI chip to detect very high and very low frequency signals from brain cells is also important for other reasons. With strokes and epileptic seizures, very low frequency signals are known to be sent out by cells in affected parts of the brain and this technology opens up a new way to explore what happens immediately after a person suffers one of these events.

“The technology – which relies on graphene’s remarkable properties – will help guide surgical interventions in the brain and also enable fundamental new understanding of how the cells in our brain function and interact in a diseased state,” Kostarelos said. said.



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