Bioelectronic Medicine: Treating Diseases with Miniaturized Biomimetic Devices

Bioelectronic Medicine (BM) has been recognized as a new type of medicine to treat/manage chronic diseases and injuries that currently cannot be cured pharmaceutically. Unlike conventional pharmaceutical approaches in which pharmacological agents are delivered at the targeted molecular/cell mechanism related to the targeted tissues/organs via systemic blood circulation, lacking of anatomical/cellular specificity and the adaptability to each individual treatment, as a result the undesirable side effect is usually accompanied. On the other hand, bioelectronic medicine stands at the nexus of engineering, medical device, computation science, biology, physiology, neuroscience, as well as clinical science, aiming to regulate the electro-chemical molecular/cellular mechanism that directly relates to the diseases via electrical neuromodulation at the nervous systems using miniaturized devices, thus potentially avoids the side effects. Thus contrasting to conventional biomolecular based medicine, the practicing clinicians of bioelectronic medicine will prescribe patients with dosage in electrical and magnetic signals, rather than prescribing the dosage of drugs as in the conventional medicine.