Eimear Dolan

When Eimear Dolan first worked to develop implantable medical devices to treat type 1 diabetes, she and her colleagues had to overcome a common roadblock. Their problem was one that’s long dogged makers of devices like pacemakers, insulin delivery systems, and breast implants: when the body senses an implanted foreign object, it constructs a protective wall of fibrous tissue. This reaction, known as the foreign body response, is one of the main reasons medical implants fail.

Today, as a biomedical engineer at the National University of Ireland Galway, Dolan thinks she’s found a way to counteract the foreign body response. Her weapon is a small robotic device known as a dynamic soft reservoir. Developed through a collaboration between Dolan’s lab at NUI Galway and researchers at MIT, the device is made of a soft material that can be made to oscillate, creating enough fluid flow to alter the environment around the implant and keep protective tissue from forming. 

Past researchers have sought to use drugs or modify the surface chemistry of an implant. Dolan’s innovation, which she and her colleagues have successfully tested in rats, marks the first time anyone has tackled the problem mechanically. “The beauty about it is it’s a drug-free approach,” Dolan says.

Her team is redesigning the dynamic soft reservoir as part of an effort to construct a “bioartificial pancreas,” an implantable reservoir of cells that produce insulin for people with type 1 diabetes. Early attempts at such devices have been particularly liable to be rejected by the body and fail. Dolan believes her team can change that—and ultimately improve the success of other implantable devices.