“We will rock you” – how a Queen song could make the insulin pump obsolete

Music instead of injections: Swiss researchers have developed a gene switch for administering insulin using sound waves. According to the researchers, it works especially well with the Queen song “We will rock you”.

In the future, this could allow diabetics to live without an insulin pump, as announced by the ETH Zurich. However, a possible clinical application is still a long way off.

According to the university, research has been pursuing for several years the idea of ​​putting insulin-producing designer cells into capsules that can be implanted in the body. Several triggers have already been tested to activate these designer cells. These include light, temperature or electric fields.

In the current study, the ETH researchers tried music. To do this, they introduced an ion channel from the bacteria E. coli into human insulin-producing cells. This ion channel responds to mechanical stimuli such as sound waves.

As the research in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology shows: the cells developed in this way started to release insulin after three seconds of sonication at a bass frequency of 50 Hertz.

According to the study, with the Queen song “We will rock you,” the scientists achieved an insulin release that is very close to the natural release.

According to the researchers, the designer cells only responded when the sound source was played directly on the skin above the implant. The release of the messenger substance was not caused by ambient noise such as airplane noise, lawnmowers or fire sirens or conversations.

The system was tested on mice. The researchers implanted the cells in their stomachs and placed them directly on a loudspeaker. Whether such systems will ever be tested on humans depends, according to the university, on whether a pharmaceutical company is interested in this principle.

(jam/sda)