Blast injuries, burns, and other wounds experienced by service members can damage their bones, skin, and nerves which can result in months to years of recovery for the most severe injuries. However, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) https://www.darpa.mil believes that recent advances in biosensors, actuators, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be extended and integrated to dramatically improve tissue regeneration.
DARPA’s “Bioelectronics for Tissue Regeneration” (BETR) program https://www.darpa.mil/program/bioelectronics-for-tissue-regeneration is working with researchers so bioelectronics can be developed to closely track the progress of the wound and be able to stimulate the healing proves in real-time to optimize tissue repair and regeneration.
Paul Sheehan, DARPA’s BETR Program Manager said, “Wounds are living environments and conditions change quickly as cells and tissues communicate and attempt to repair. An ideal treatment would sense, process, and respond to these changes in the wound state and then intervene to speed recovery.”
Passive approaches often result in slow healing or incomplete healing with scarring, or in some cases, no healing at all. Blast injuries seem to scramble the healing processes as 23 percent of the blast injuries will not fully close.
Research shows that nearly two thirds of military trauma cases can suffer abnormal bone growth in their soft tissue due to a condition known as heterotopic ossification, a painful experience that can limit future mobility.
The BETR program intends to use any available signal whether optical, biochemical, bioelectronics, or mechanical to directly monitor the body’s physiological processes. The goal is to stimulate the processes to bring them under control, in order to speed healing avoid scarring, or any other forms of abnormal healing.
DARPA is expecting researches to demonstrate a closed-loop adaptivsystem to include:
- Sensors to assess wound state and track the body’s complex responses to interventions
- Biological actuators that will transmit appropriate biochemical and biophysical signals precisely over space and time to influence healing
- Adaptive learning approaches to process data, build models, and determine interventions