Swiss-based Indian scientist's implant lowers blood sugar in mice without insulin or drugs

On Thursday, researchers at ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, reported a small implant that pulls excess glucose out of the blood of diabetic mice without insulin or any drug. Among them was Debasis Maity, an Indian postdoctoral researcher, who described the work to The Telegraph in a telephone interview. The paper is set to appear in the US journal Science on Friday.

In the mice, blood sugar improved within 90 minutes of the device switching on. Over six weeks of treatment, the animals also lost body weight and showed lower triglyceride levels, and the team detected no adverse effects.

The implant sits under the skin and is housed in a casing measuring 26mm by 14mm by 5mm. It connects through a smartphone to a continuous glucose monitor. When blood sugar rises above a pre-set threshold, the device activates on its own and begins clearing glucose. Because it is electrically driven, the rate of removal can be adjusted, and it stops once glucose reaches the target level.

Inside is an electrocatalyst made of tiny platinum-decorated gold particles embedded in a graphite base. The cluster selectively converts glucose into gluconate, a compound the kidneys rapidly excrete. The team, supervised by Martin Fussenegger, professor of biotechnology and bioengineering, calls this a dose-controllable, drug-free alternative for diabetes control. They argue that current drug therapies can be limited by adverse effects, tolerability, adherence, cost and unresolved long-term safety questions.

The scale of the problem is large. The International Diabetes Federation's 2025 Atlas estimated nearly 590 million adults worldwide living with diabetes, over 90 million of them in India, often alongside obesity. Treatment relies largely on medicines that lower glucose or body weight, typically for life. Some studies suggest diabetes and the need for medication might be reversed through rigorous diet and lifestyle change, but poor adherence to those regimens remains a major obstacle.

Maity graduated from the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Centenary College in Calcutta and earned a PhD from Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. He joined ETH six years ago and has worked with Fussenegger on implants for metabolic disorders.

He is plain about how early this is. "These are proof-of-concept experiments in lab mice," he said, adding that the technology needs refining and the device needs to shrink before human trials. In lab experiments, the team showed glucose clearance in about five litres of liquid, comparable to an adult human's blood volume. The catalyst used in those tests measures 5cm by 5cm by 0.5cm, far larger than the implant casing. Future work will focus on miniaturising it and integrating a power source, such as wireless charging, along with a continuous glucose monitor.

Ambrish Mithal, chair of endocrinology and diabetology at the Max Healthcare group in New Delhi, was not involved in the study. He called it conceptually fascinating: controlling glucose without drugs, insulin or lifestyle changes. He cautioned that what works in lab mice need not work in people, but said it was the most novel thing he had seen this year in diabetes treatment strategies. The next steps to watch are the shrinking of the catalyst and the integration of power and monitoring, which must happen before any human trial.