Skeletal Muscle-Actuated Bio-Hybrid Implant and Wearable Reader Antenna System

Engineering living cells can open the gates for durable implants that constantly monitor patients’ health without requiring any battery power. This work aims to develop a biohybrid implantable sensor that is capable of sensing and responding to a chemical stimulant within the medium. Structurally, the bio-hybrid device is composed of muscle tissue, a 3D-printed flexible scaffold, and a resonator. Mechanistically, muscle tissue, which is engineered to respond to particular stimulants, contracts in the presence of the stimulant and deforms the scaffold it is attached. This deformation results in a change in the resonance behavior. This change is tracked with a pair of wearable co-planar waveguide (CPW)-fed ultra-wideband (UWB) antennas. Thus, the proposed bio-hybrid device will enable monitoring chemicals within the medium owing to the biosensing and actuating capabilities of muscle tissue. The resonator, in turn, will allow reporting of this information to wearable readers. At 1 cm implant depth inside Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM), more than 10 dB difference in |S21| between the reader antennas is observed when the engineered muscle contracts.