{"id":142,"date":"2018-12-27T22:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T22:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/27\/iota-biosciences-raises-15m-to-produce-in-body-sensors-smaller-than-a-grain-of-rice\/"},"modified":"2018-12-27T22:00:03","modified_gmt":"2018-12-27T22:00:03","slug":"iota-biosciences-raises-15m-to-produce-in-body-sensors-smaller-than-a-grain-of-rice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/27\/iota-biosciences-raises-15m-to-produce-in-body-sensors-smaller-than-a-grain-of-rice\/","title":{"rendered":"Iota Biosciences raises $15M to produce in-body sensors smaller than a grain of rice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Fitness trackers and heart rate monitors are all well and good, but if you want to track activity inside the body, the solutions aren\u2019t nearly as convenient. Iota Biosciences<\/a> wants to change that with millimeter-wide sensors that can live more or less permanently in your body and transmit what they detect wirelessly, and a $15 million series A should put them well on their way.<\/p>\n

The team emerged from research at UC Berkeley, where co-founders Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz were working on improving the state of microelectrodes. These devices are used all over medical and experimental science to monitor and stimulate nerves and muscle tissues. For instance, a microelectrode array in the brain might be able to help detect early signs of a seizure, and around the heart one could precisely test the rhythms of cardiac tissues.<\/p>\n

But despite their name, microelectrodes aren\u2019t really small. The tips, sure, but they\u2019re often connected to larger machines, or battery-powered packs, and they can rarely stay in the body for more than a few weeks or months due to various complications associated with them.<\/p>\n

Considering how far we\u2019ve come in other sectors when it comes to miniaturization, manufacturing techniques, and power efficiency, Carmena and Maharbiz thought, why don\u2019t we have something better?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea at first was to have free floating motes in the brain with RF [radio frequency] powering them,\u201d Carmena said. But they ran into a fundamental problem: RF radiation, because of its long wavelength, requires rather a large antenna to receive them. Much larger than was practical for devices meant to swim in the bloodstream.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a meeting at which everything died, because we were like two orders of magnitude away from what we needed. The physics just weren\u2019t there,\u201d he recalled. \u201cSo were like, \u2018I guess that\u2019s it!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

But some time after, Carmena had a \u2018eureka\u2019 moment \u2014 \u201cas weird as it sounds, it occurred to me in a parking lot. You just think about it and all these things align.\u201d<\/p>\n

His revelation: ultrasound.<\/p>\n

Power at the speed of sound<\/h2>\n

You\u2019re probably familiar with ultrasound as a diagnostic tool, for imaging inside the body during pregnancy and the like \u2014 or possibly as a range-finding tool that \u201cpings\u201d nearby objects. There\u2019s been a lot of focus on the venerable technology recently as technologists have found new applications for it.<\/p>\n

In fact, a portable ultrasound company just won TechCrunch\u2019s Startup Battlefield in Lagos<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Iota\u2019s approach, however, has little to do with these traditional uses of the technology. Remember the principle that you have to have an antenna that\u2019s a reasonable fraction of an emission\u2019s wavelength in order to capture it? Well, ultrasound has a wavelength measured in microns \u2014 millionths of a meter.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So it can be captured \u2014 and captured very efficiently. That means an ultrasound antenna can easily catch enough waves to power a connected device.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but as you might guess from its use in imaging, ultrasound goes right through us. Lots of radiation, including RF, gets absorbed by the charged, salty water that makes up much of the human body.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltrasound doesn\u2019t do that,\u201d Maharbiz said. \u201cYou\u2019re just jell-o \u2014 it goes right through you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The device they put together to take advantage of this is remarkably simple, and incredibly tiny. On one side is what\u2019s called a piezoelectric crystal, something that transforms force \u2014 in this case, ultrasound \u2014 into electricity. In the middle is a tiny chip, and around the edge runs a set of electrodes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s so small that it can be attached to a single nerve or muscle fiber. When the device is activated by a beam of ultrasound, voltage runs between the electrodes, and this minute current is affected by the electrical activity of the tissue. These slight changes are literally reflected in how the ultrasonic pulses bounce back, and the reader can derive electrophysiological voltage from those changes.<\/p>\n

Basically the waves they send power the device and bounce back slightly changed, depending on what the nerve or muscle is doing. By sending a steady stream of pulses, the system collects a constant stream of precise monitoring data simply and non-invasively. (And yes, this has been demonstrated in in vivo<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Contained inside non-reactive, implant-safe containers, these microscopic \u201cmotes\u201d could be installed singly or by the dozen, doing everything from monitoring heart tissue to controlling a prosthesis. And because they can also deliver a voltage, they could conceivably be used for therapeutic purposes as well.<\/p>\n

And to be clear, those purposes won\u2019t be inside<\/em> the brain. Although there\u2019s no particular reason this tech wouldn\u2019t work in the central nervous system, it would have to be smaller and testing would be much more complicated. The initial applications will all be in the peripheral nervous system.<\/p>\n

At any rate, before any of that happens, they have to be approved by the FDA.<\/p>\n

The long medtech road<\/h2>\n

As you might guess, this isn\u2019t the kind of thing you can just invent and then start implanting all over the place. Implants, especially electronic ones, must undergo extreme scrutiny before being allowed to be used in even experimental treatment.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for Iota, their devices have a lot of advantages over, say, a pacemaker with a radio-based data connection and 5-year battery. The only transmission involved is ultrasound, for one thing, and there are decades of studies showing the safety of using it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe FDA has well-defined limits for average and peak powers for the human body with ultrasound, and we\u2019re nowhere near those frequencies or powers. This is very different,\u201d explained Maharbiz. \u201cThere\u2019s no exotic materials or techniques. As far as constant low-level ultrasound goes, the notion really is that it does nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And unlike a major device like a medication port, pump, stint, pacemaker, or even a long-term electrode, \u201cinstallation\u201d is straightforward and easily reversible.<\/p>\n

It would be done laparoscopically, or through a tiny incision. said Carmena. \u201cIf it has to be taken out, it can be taken out, but it\u2019s so minimally invasive and small and safe that we keep it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

These are all marks in Iota\u2019s favor, but testing can\u2019t be rushed. Although the groundwork for their devices was laid in 2013, the team has taken a great deal of time to advance the science to the point where it can be taken out of the lab to begin with.<\/p>\n

In order to get it now to the point where they can propose human trials, Iota has raised $15 million in funding; the round was led by Horizons Ventures, Astellas, Bold Capital Parners, Ironfire, and Shanda. (The round was in May but only just announced<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The A round should get the company from its current prototype phase to a point, perhaps some 18 months distant, when they have a production-ready version ready to present to the FDA \u2014 at which point more funding will probably be required to get through the subsequent years of testing.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the game in medtech, and all the investors know it. This could be a hugely disruptive technology in a number of fields, although at first the devices need to be approved for a single medical purpose (one Iota has decided on but can\u2019t disclose yet).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a long road, all right, but at the end of it is the fulfillment of a promise straight out of sci-fi. It may be years before you have microscopic, ultrasound-powered doodads swimming around inside you, but that future is well on its way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/12\/27\/iota-biosciences-raises-15m-to-produce-in-body-sensors-smaller-than-a-grain-of-rice\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surfshields.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}