Horizon: Eric Glowacki researches how to help Crohn's disease patients

Up to a fifth of Europeans have some kind of chronic pain and related problems that complicate their lives. Horizon, a research and innovation magazine published on behalf of the European Commission, released an article earlier this year that featured two European projects aimed at developing innovative devices to relieve chronic pain. One of these projects is OPTEL-MED by Eric Glowacki's research group at CEITEC BUT. His team is focusing on the development of a miniature implant to provide relief for people suffering from Crohn's disease. We offer a related section of the Horizon article.

Bowel benefits

Activating the vagus nerve, which is sometimes also called the “soul nerve” because of its complexity and sensitivity, can do more for people’s health than dulling chronic pain. Such stimulation has also been found to improve mood, ease stress, aid digestion, help the heart and strengthen immunity.

‘It seems that, every week, I hear of a new area of science that’s investigating the health-promoting properties of the vagus nerve,’ said Dr Eric Daniel Glowacki, a materials scientist at CEITEC BUT.

He leads an EU-funded project that aims to manipulate the vagus nerve to ease the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, which affects as many as 3 million people in Europe. Called OPTEL-MED, the project runs for five years until the end of 2025.

Specifically, Glowacki’s team is investigating a type of IBD known as Crohn’s disease, which causes diarrhoea, weight loss and malnutrition along with stomach pain. The researchers are developing an implant consisting of electrodes to stimulate the vagus nerve.

The vagus, the longest cranial nerve in the body, is something of a “data highway”, the vagus nerve runs from the brainstem at the bottom of the brain along the spinal cord to the colon, branching out on the way through the neck, chest and abdomen. Its job is to send crucial electrical messages back and forth between the brain and the body and plays a key role in the processing of pain.

Light-powered implant

The work is based on growing evidence that vagus-nerve stimulation at specific frequencies can have a dramatic impact on the spleen – an organ that is intimately involved in the body’s inflammatory process.

‘When the vagus nerve of Crohn’s patients is stimulated at these frequencies, there’s an overall drop in their splenic immune response and their symptoms ease and sometimes disappear completely,’ said Glowacki.

OPTEL-MED’s goal is to create an implant that is both much smaller than any available today – a pacemaker, for example, is around the size of a matchbox – and doesn’t require surgery every four to five years to change the battery.

The team’s solution is for the implant to be powered by light in the red and near-infrared parts of the spectrum. At such wavelengths, light particles can penetrate skin and tissue to an implant located 2 centimetres beneath the skin near the collarbone, according to Glowacki.

‘The idea is for the patient to place a device like a smart phone to their neck to activate the implant, which then stimulates the vagus nerve,’ he said. To date, a super-miniature version of the device has been tested – safely and successfully – on mice and rats.

Next, the team plans to progress to larger mammals. Eventually, Glowacki hopes this wireless light-powered technology will be widely available to patients.

‘We envisage people with Crohn’s using their implants the way asthmatics use an inhaler,’ he said. ‘When they feel their symptoms coming on, they will hold up their phone and activate their device.’

Read the full article on the Horizon website

Research in this article was funded by the EU including, in the case of OPTEL-MED, via the European Research Council (ERC).

More about Eric Glowacki's work can be found on the CEITEC BUT website: From “dirty” work for others to a leadership position. ERC grantee Eric Glowacki openly discusses his scientific journey