Self-Adhesive and Self-Sustainable Bioelectronic Patch for Physiological Feedback Electronic Modulation of Soft Organs

Adv Mater. 2024 Oct;36(41):e2406636. doi: 10.1002/adma.202406636. Epub 2024 Aug 15.

Abstract

Bionic electrical stimulation (Bio-ES) aims to achieve personalized therapy and proprioceptive adaptation by mimicking natural neural signatures of the body, while current Bio-ES devices are reliant on complex sensing and computational simulation systems, thus often limited by the low-fidelity of simulated electrical signals, and failure of interface information interaction due to the mechanical mismatch between soft tissues and rigid electrodes. Here, the study presents a flexible and ultrathin self-sustainable bioelectronic patch (Bio-patch), which can self-adhere to the lesion area of organs and generate bionic electrical signals synchronized vagal nerve envelope in situ to implement Bio-ES. It allows adaptive adjustment of intensity, frequency, and waveform of the Bio-ES to fully meet personalized needs of tissue regeneration based on real-time feedback from the vagal neural controlled organs. With this foundation, the Bio-patch can effectively intervene with excessive fibrosis and microvascular stasis during the natural healing process by regulating the polarization time of macrophages, promoting the reconstruction of the tissue-engineered structure, and accelerating the repair of damaged liver and kidney. This work develops a practical approach to realize biomimetic electronic modulation of the growth and development of soft organs only using a multifunctional Bio-patch, which establishes a new paradigm for precise bioelectronic medicine.

Keywords: bioelectronic patch; biointerfaces; bionic electrical stimulation; damage repair; soft tissue engineering.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Bionics
  • Electric Stimulation*
  • Electrodes
  • Feedback, Physiological
  • Humans
  • Tissue Engineering / methods
  • Vagus Nerve / physiology