An Indian scientist in Switzerland has helped design a tiny wirelessly powered implantable device that removes excess glucose from the bloodstream without external insulin or medication, promising a novel bioengineering route to diabetes control.
In diabetic mice, the device improved blood sugar levels within 90 minutes and reduced body weight and triglyceride levels without any detectable adverse effects during six weeks of treatment, Debasis Maity and his colleagues at ETH Zurich said on Thursday.
The device, implanted under the skin and connected to a continuous glucose monitor via a smartphone, automatically activates when blood sugar levels exceed a pre-set threshold, enabling targeted removal of glucose, the researchers said.
“These are proof-of-concept experiments in lab mice,” Maity, a postdoctoral researcher at ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, told The Telegraph in a telephone interview. “We would need to refine the technology and make the device even smaller before human trials.”
The International Diabetes Federation’s 2025 Atlas had estimated nearly 590 million adults worldwide, including over 90 million in India, living with diabetes, often coexisting with obesity. Current treatment relies largely on medications that lower glucose or body weight, but these therapies may produce side effects and typically involve lifelong treatment.
While some studies have suggested that diabetes and the dependence on medications could be potentially reversed through rigorous diet and lifestyle, poor adherence to the required regimens remains a major challenge in diabetes control.
The ETH team, supervised by Martin Fussenegger, professor of biotechnology and bioengineering, has developed an implant — housed in a 26mm by 14mm by 5mm casing — containing an electrocatalyst that removes excess glucose from the bloodstream at an adjustable rate.
The device could provide “a dose-controllable drug-free therapeutic alternative” for diabetes control, the scientists said in a paper set for publication in the US journal Science on Friday.
“The drug-free mode of action is relevant because current pharmacological therapies can be limited by adverse effects, tolerability, adherence, cost, and unresolved long-term safety questions,” they wrote.
Maity graduated from the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Centenary College in Calcutta and earned a PhD from Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. He joined ETH six years ago and worked with Fussenegger on the development of implants to control metabolic disorders.
Their wirelessly powered implantable device contains tiny platinum-decorated gold particles embedded in a graphite base. The cluster of particles serves as an electrocatalyst that selectively converts glucose into gluconate, a compound rapidly excreted through the kidneys.
Since the device is electrically activated, the rate of glucose removal can be finely controlled. The implant, connected to a continuous glucose monitoring system, seeks to restore glucose balance by increasing removal when glucose levels exceed threshold levels but stopping as they reach target levels.
“At the current stage of the technology, we’ve demonstrated through lab experiments glucose clearance in approximately five litres of liquid, comparable to the typical blood volume in an adult human,” Maity said. The catalyst for those experiments measures 5cm by 5cm by 0.5cm.
He said future research will focus on efforts to miniaturise the implant and integrate it with an electrical power source such as a wireless charging system and a continuous glucose monitoring device.
“I think this is conceptually a fascinating idea — controlling glucose without drugs, without insulin, without lifestyle changes,” Ambrish Mithal, chair of endocrinology and diabetology at the Max Healthcare group in New Delhi who was not connected with the Swiss study, told this newspaper.
Mithal cautioned that something that works in lab mice need not always work in people, but he added: “this is the most novel thing I’ve seen this year on diabetes treatment strategies”.