Using Electricity to Attack Implant Infections

Using animal models, a team from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo has devised a system that they say eradicated 98% of harmful bacteria associated with joint replacements.

“Our goal is to eliminate the need for follow-up surgeries. We think we can wipe out infection-causing bacteria before trouble starts,” says Wayne Bacon, president and CEO of Garwood Medical Devices, the Buffalo-based startup developing the biotechnology with assistance from the University at Buffalo’s Buffalo Institute for Genomics and Data Analytics (BIG).

The seed for the innovation—called Biofilm Disruption Device (BDD)—was born in the laboratory of Mark Ehrensberger, Ph.D., associate professor in the University of Buffalo’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint program of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.

According to Garwood Medical Devices, The Biofilm Disruption Device, which includes “two electrode skin patches, generates low voltage electricity which is carried to the joint replacement implant via a needle about the size of a sewing needle that carries the electricity to the joint replacement. The physician inserts the needle into the body until it reaches the implant or metal hardware. The electric stimulation then triggers a chemical reaction at the surface of implant which produces a surrounding microenvironment that promotes the killing of bacteria.”

Brian Peterson, vice president and chief technology officer, explained the device further to OTW. “During any device development you have the lows of discovering new challenges and the highs of solving them. I believe it is these highs and lows that challenge good engineers to push through problems and come up with novel solutions.”

“The BDD is certainly no exception and in fact the most interesting moment I think my team and I had was when we took all of the knowledge that Dr. Ehrenberger shared with us and created a device that created the exact reaction we were looking for. Once we had that working, the next task was using this device to facilitate this reaction on a full-size metal implant through the use of only a needle, an off-the-shelf skin-based reference electrode, and an exciting new proprietary skin-based counter electrode that our Biomedical Engineer Jackson Hobble developed.”

“While making the device work for the first time was magical, seeing all of the hard work and planning by the team come together and make the game changing technology work in a truly minimally invasive fashion for the first time was on a whole other level. However, you put both of those together and following the in vitro protocols that Stephen Tyrpak, Garwood’s Director of Research, put together and show near perfect disruption of clinical strength, really nasty bacteria, and I think I can speak for the entire team when I say that this really generated the most excitement so far. It at least was the most excitement I have had in my career as an engineer so far!”

“The goal of this device is not to change the standard of care but rather work WITH the standard of care to improve the positive outcome of most if not all early stage interventions. The goal is to eliminate the need for a two-stage revision by either making it a single stage revision surgery in the worst case, or best case making the antibiotic therapy given early on more effective. Even making DAIR [debridement, antibiotics and implant retention] much more effective is game-changing. Our device differentiates itself from other research technologies in this area as it helps disrupt biofilm in the difficult to reach, but crucial bone-to-metal interface.”