How can you grow a pacemaker?
Epilepsy is a severe and chronic disease characterised by intermittent seizures. Implantable electronic pacemakers can interrupt these seizures, but only once they have already taken hold. The EU-funded PRIME(opens in new window) project designed an innovative solution which uses engineered brain cells to act as a living computer, sensing and preventing epileptic seizures. It has now been featured in the CORDIS series of explanatory videos titled ‘Make the connection with EU science’. PRIME brought together expert international partners in multidisciplinary fields including synthetic biology, computer science, communication engineering and nanomedicine to develop an autonomous implantable living cell system. “The innovations pioneered by PRIME have the potential to revolutionise how we diagnose and monitor neurological diseases by detecting biomarkers efficiently,” says project coordinator Deirdre Kilbane. “We have taken a huge leap towards building bioengineered tools for better brain health.” ‘Make the connection with EU science’ is a series of explanatory videos focusing on the scientific content and exploitation aspects of EU research projects.