Swallow a Camera for Good Health?

Down the hatch!

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have unveiled a non-toxic, edible battery that could one day power ingestible devices for diagnosing and treating disease. They’re doing it through batteries made with melanin pigments, which are naturally found in the skin, hair and eyes.

“For decades, people have been envisioning that one day, we would have edible electronic devices to diagnose or treat disease,” said Christopher Bettinger, Ph.D., in a statement. “But if you want to take a device every day, you have to think about toxicity issues. That’s when we have to think about biologically derived materials that could replace some of these things you might find in a Radio Shack.”

A battery-operated ingestible camera was created about 20 years ago as a complementary tool to endoscopies. But the camera and some other implantable devices — like pacemakers — run on batteries containing toxic components that are sequestered away from contact with the body. Those items run other risks, too.

For low-power, repeat applications such as drug-delivery devices that are meant to be swallowed, non-toxic and degradable batteries are a much more ideal scenario.

“The beauty is that by definition, an ingestible, degradable device is in the body for no longer than 20 hours or so,” Bettinger said. “Even if you have marginal performance, which we do, that’s all you need.”

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Bettinger’s team experimented with battery designs that use melanin pigments at either the positive or negative terminals; various electrode materials such as manganese oxide and sodium titanium phosphate; and cations such as copper and iron that the body uses for normal functioning.

While the capacity of a melanin battery is low relative to lithium-ion, it would be high enough to power an ingestible drug-delivery or sensing device.

Bettinger envisions using his group’s battery for sensing gut microbiome changes and responding with a release of medicine, or for delivering bursts of a vaccine over several hours before degrading.

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When these batteries will be incorporated into biomedical devices is uncertain. But the team is also making edible batteries with other biomaterials such as pectin, a natural compound from plants used as a gelling agent in jams and jellies. Next, they plan on developing packaging materials that will safely deliver the battery to the stomach.