DARPA wants ‘smart bandages’ to sense, treat & prevent infections

DARPA is putting together a research program to develop bioelectronic “smart bandages” loaded with sensors to diagnose, treat, and even prevent infections.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced its “BioElectronics to Sense and Treat” (BEST) research program to develop “wearable, automated technologies that can predict and prevent a wound infection before it can occur, and to eliminate an infection if it has already taken hold.”

According to the BEST special notice, “The sensors will be high-resolution and provide real-time, continual monitoring of wounds based on, for example, microbial wound community and/or host signatures.

“Data from these sensors will be used to predict if a wound will fail to heal due to infection, diagnose the infection, and regulate administration of targeted treatments by closed loop control to prevent a predicted infection or to resolve an existing infection so that the wound heals.”

While initially intended for wounds sustained on the battlefield, DARPA will be looking to transition technologies coming out of its new BEST program into the commercial sector.

Key to success of the BEST program will be technologies that:

1. Adapt to variations in the wound microbial community composition
2. Adapt to variations among individuals
3. Continually update the status of a wound to intervene when indicated to fail
4. Utilize nonantibiotic treatments to which microbes cannot develop resistance due to high rates of antibiotic resistant combat wound infections
5. Does not interfere with a wound that is predicted to heal on its own

“By the end of the program, the sensor and treatment elements will be combined into a low size, weight, and power (SWaP), closed-loop device that can provide rapid predictions and precise treatments and can be deployed at all roles of military medical care including the battlefield,” according to a DARPA press release.

Smart bandages are already being researched and developed by teams from Caltech, the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and Stanford University, to name a few.

“We’re creating a new kind of ‘cyber skin’ that can help these wounds heal, while measuring and managing them along the way,” said Keck School of Medicine professor Dr. David Armstrong, PhD, in a press release from last year.

While the NIH-backed Caltech and Keck School of Medicine collaboration to develop “smart bandages” or “cyber skin” is aimed at treating chronic wounds, DARPA is more concentrated at monitoring, treating and even preventing infections at speed.

Leading DARPA’s BEST research project is program manager Dr. Leonard Tender, who joined DARPA in January 2023.

Prior to that, Dr. Tender was a principal investigator and led the Laboratory for Molecular Interfaces in the Center for Bio/Molecular Science and Engineering at the US Naval Research Laboratory where he facilitated numerous international collaborations with key external stakeholders in academia, industry, and government.

Dr. Tender is also listed as the current program manager for DARPA’s “Bioelectronics for Tissue Regeneration” (BETR) program, which was first launched in February 2019 under the leadership of former DARPA program manager Dr. Paul Sheehan, who is now a program manager for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).

Like BEST, BETR also utilizes bioelectronics for quicker wound recovery, but more specifically on injuries such as blast and burn damage to skin, muscle, and nerves.

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