Ion pump releases precise dose in spinal cord, reduces pain

Researchers at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Linköping University in Sweden have developed an ion pump that integrates itself within the communication pathways between nerves and muscles to reduce the feeling of pain.

The ion pump delivers gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) to cells at a smaller and more precise scale. When tested on rats, the ion pump delivered GABA to the spinal cord and was able to reduce pain. The work was published in Science Advances.

"Our skilled doctoral students, Amanda Jonsson and Theresia Arbring Sjöström, have succeeded with the last important part of the puzzle in the development of the ion pump. When a signal passes between two synapses it takes one to 10 milliseconds, and we are now very close to the nervous system's own speed," said Magnus Berggren, professor of organic electronics and director of the Laboratory of Organic Electronics. "We conclude that we have produced artificial nerves that can communicate seamlessly with the nervous system. After more than 10 years' research, we have finally have all the parts of the puzzle in place," he says.

Researchers hope to soon be able to test the pump on live cells in the attempt to cure a multitude of afflictions such as epileptic seizures and Parkinson’s disease. This would further test the precision by using on the exact dose for each of the affected cells using the cells own speed.  

"We can make them with several outlets, it's just as easy as making one. And all of the outlets can be individually controlled. Previously we could only transport ions horizontally and from all outputs at the same time. Now, however, we can deliver the ions vertically, which makes the distance they have to be transported as short as a micrometer," said Berggren.