Bioelectronic SWITCH platform

The goal of the Bioelectronic SWITCH platform is to address the current molecular weight size limitation of organic electronic ion pumps to broaden their application areas and include antibiotic, protein or hormone delivery. Biology predominantly uses ions and molecules rather than electrons to regulate functions. Signaling through biomolecules can therefore be more diverse and more specific than purely electrical stimulation. However, today there are only limited technological solutions to bridge this gap between biology and electronics. In this context, the organic electronic ion pump (OEIP) platform, developed by Prof. Magnus Berggren and co-workers offers a new way to translate an electronic addressing signal into a chemical drug delivery, providing a unique way of interfacing biology with electronics. The idea is essentially to electrically SWITCH on the device which delivers the desired drug with ultra-high precision. However, due to the intrinsic design, the current system can only release very small chemical compounds, preventing the release of more interesting compounds such as antibiotics, proteins or hormones. The idea of this proposal is to use a novel type of chemistry based on substitution chemistry to lift this size limitation. By finetuning the chemical nature of the precursors and extensive electrochemical-, chemical- and biological tests, the optimized conditions for the implementation of the novel chemistry into the OEIP technology will be identified. Finally, this platform will be evaluated using model compounds to give a proof-of-principle demonstration of the novel concept, before eventually optimizing and adapting the SWITCH concept to meet the requirements for clinical applications in the future.