A multidisciplinary team led by Ken Shepard, a pioneering researcher in bioelectronics at Columbia Engineering, has won an award of up to $41 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to build a wireless bioelectronic device to treat obesity and diabetes. The team was selected by ARPA-H’s Resilient Extended Automatic Cell Therapies (REACT) program to create bioelectronic devices that enable people to administer treatments of biologic drugs without the need for injections. Instead, engineered cells act as cell factories to produce the drugs, negating the need for the chemical modifications required to make such biologics shelf-stable, which often results in reduced efficacy.
