Florian Koehler | Bioelectronics at MIT

Magnetoelectric nanodiscs enable wireless transgene-free neuromodulation

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Flo's defense

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Congratulations to Flo on a successful thesis defense: “Magnetic Tools for Neural Interfacing”!!!

Magnetic robots walk, crawl, and swim

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

MIT scientists have developed tiny, soft-bodied robots that can be controlled with a weak magnet. The robots, formed from rubbery magnetic spirals, can be programmed to walk, crawl, swim — all in response to a simple, easy-to-apply magnetic field.

“This is the first time this has been done, to be able to control three-dimensional locomotion of robots with a one-dimensional magnetic field,” says Professor Polina Anikeeva, whose team published an open-access paper on the magnetic robots June 3 in the journal Advanced Materials. “And because they are predominantly composed of polymer and polymers are soft, you don’t need a very large magnetic field to activate them. It’s actually a really tiny magnetic field that drives these robots,” adds Anikeeva, who is a professor of materials science and engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, a McGovern Institute for Brain Research associate investigator, as well as the associate director of MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics and director of MIT’s K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center.

The new robots are well suited to transport cargo through confined spaces and their rubber bodies are gentle on fragile environments, opening the possibility that the technology could be developed for biomedical applications. Anikeeva and her team have made their robots millimeters long, but she says the same approach could be used to produce much smaller robots.

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Magnetically Actuated Fiber‐Based Soft Robots

Sat, 03 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Modulating cell signalling in vivo with magnetic nanotransducers

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Magnetothermal Modulation of Calcium‐Dependent Nerve Growth

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Probing Neuro-Endocrine Interactions Through Remote Magnetothermal Adrenal Stimulation

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 04:52:56 +0000

Modular Integration of Hydrogel Neural Interfaces

Sat, 28 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Influence of Magnetic Fields on Electrochemical Reactions of Redox Cofactor Solutions

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Modular Integration of Hydrogel Neural Interfaces

Fri, 07 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Controlling drug activity with light

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hormones and nutrients bind to receptors on cell surfaces by a lock-and-key mechanism that triggers intracellular events linked to that specific receptor. Drugs that mimic natural molecules are widely used to control these intracellular signaling mechanisms for therapy and in research.

In a recent publication, a team led by MIT Associate Professor Polina Anikeeva, a McGovern Institute for Brain Research Associate Investigator, and Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) Research Assistant Professor James Frank introduce a microfiber technology to deliver and activate a drug that can be induced to bind its receptor by exposure to light.

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In vivo photopharmacology enabled by multifunctional fibers

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Remotely controlled proton generation for neuromodulation

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Gaseous Messenger Molecule

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Nitric oxide is an important signaling molecule in the body, with a role in building nervous system connections that contribute to learning and memory. It also functions as a messenger in the cardiovascular and immune systems.

But it has been difficult for researchers to study exactly what its role is in these systems and how it functions. Because it is a gas, there has been no practical way to direct it to specific individual cells in order to observe its effects. Now, a team of scientists and engineers at MIT and elsewhere has found a way of generating the gas at precisely targeted locations inside the body, potentially opening new lines of research on this essential molecule’s effects.

The findings are reported today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, in a paper by MIT professors Polina Anikeeva, Karthish Manthiram, and Yoel Fink; graduate student Jimin Park; postdoc Kyoungsuk Jin; and 10 others at MIT and in Taiwan, Japan, and Israel.

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In situ electrochemical generation of nitric oxide for neuronal modulation

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hormone Release

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Abnormal levels of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are linked to a variety of mental health disorders, including depression and PTSD. MIT researchers, including the Anikeeva group, have now devised a way to remotely control the release of these hormones from the adrenal gland using magnetic nanoparticles.

To achieve control over hormone release, Dekel Rosenfeld, an MIT-Technion postdoc in Professor Anikeeva’s group, has developed specialized magnetic nanoparticles that can be injected into the adrenal gland. When exposed to a weak magnetic field, the particles heat up slightly, activating heat-responsive channels that trigger hormone release. This technique can be used to stimulate an organ deep in the body with minimal invasiveness.

The researchers now plan to use this approach to study how hormone release affects PTSD and other disorders, and they say that eventually it could be adapted for treating such disorders. This method would offer a much less invasive alternative to potential treatments that involve implanting a medical device to electrically stimulate hormone release, which is not feasible in organs such as the adrenal glands that are soft and highly vascularized.

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Transgene-free remote magnetothermal regulation of adrenal hormones

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000