Development of an open-source, wireless and implantable vagus nerve stimulator for preclinical studies in mice

Abstract

The advantages of electrical neuromodulation-based treatments over pharmacological and surgical approaches are clear since they mean a non destructive and reversible alternative. Moreover, they can avoid the large ingest of drugs that many treatments entail nowadays, avoiding therefore their side effects. Vagus nerve stimulation is expected to be a promising neuromodulation therapy capable of treating a wide variety of diseases like obesity, atherosclerosis, type II diabetes or heart failure; moreover it has already been approved for depression and epilepsy. Vagus nerve (tenth cranial nerve) constitutes an interesting target for this type of stimulation since it is well known that it plays a major role in inflammatory pathways and the amount of diseases related with inflammations is huge (e.g. inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoiod arthritis etc.). Taking all of this into consideration, it can be understood the increasing need of functional long-lasting vagus nerve stimulators for pre-clinical research in rodent models. In addition, the current lack of this type of commercial stimulators (none of them open-source) in the market makes this work more essential. As a first step of a series of bachelor thesis (BT), this BT proposes the development of a device aimed to be open-source and fully implantable and wireless, avoiding thus percutaneous wiring that makes the stimulator less hardwearing. To accomplish this, it has been proposed a small device (10 mm of diameter) based only on commercially available components and powered by a 3V coin battery. Besides, it is current controlled and delivers passive biphasic pulses for the stimulation. This device is part of a whole vagus nerve stimulation system, which would also include the cuff electrodes (whose design and manufacture has also been developed in this BT) and the encapsulation.