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i3S receives European funding to create smart prostheses that prevent cardiovascular accidents

A European consortium led by an i3S team recently received funding of almost three million euros from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder Challenge, under the Horizon Europe programme. Called “Blood2Power”, the project aims to develop intelligent vascular medical devices capable of sending alerts before failures occur, thus allowing early medical intervention and preventing new cardiovascular events.

Led by Inês Gonçalves, this European consortium includes three other partners – the Institute of Materials Physics of the University of Porto (IFIMUP), the University of Navarra, in Spain, and the Medical University of Vienna, in Austria – and aims to reduce mortality caused by cardiovascular diseases, which is currently 16.8 million deaths/year worldwide.

Although the use of stents and vascular prostheses to restore blood flow to clogged arteries has improved the prognosis for these diseases, these devices often fail without warning, often with catastrophic effects for the patient. “As part of this three-year project, we want to develop the next generation of vascular medical devices, introducing the concept of intelligent vascular prostheses capable of generating energy and self-monitoring their performance”, explains Inês Gonçalves.

In the event of a decrease in the performance of these new vascular prostheses, “alerts are sent to the health system, which will allow for early medical intervention, anticipating the failure of the prosthesis, due to the formation of a clot, and preventing a new cardiovascular event, for example a myocardial infarction”, adds the researcher and leader of the “Advanced Graphene Biomaterials” group. In this way, medical care will become continuous and not episodic.

To achieve this pioneering technology, adds Andreia Pereira, who is also part of the i3S team, “new biocompatible triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) will be developed, which convert the body’s mechanical energy into electrical energy”. These nanogenerators will be made in collaboration with researchers João Ventura and André Pereira from IFIMUP.

“An energy management unit and a miniaturized and ultra-low consumption wireless system will also be developed, which will be coupled to the vascular prosthesis, allowing to store the generated energy and collect and transmit the data to an external electronic device (eg smartphone/watch)”, clarifies Andreia Pereira. This component will have the collaboration of a team from the University of Navarra, led by researcher Andoni Beriain.

The performance of the new intelligent vascular prosthesis will be validated in an animal model with the collaboration of researcher Helga Bergmeister, from the Medical University of Vienna. The project also has a group of clinical consultants, who will help develop a product that responds to the needs of patients and physicians.

In addition to researchers Inês Gonçalves and Andreia Pereira, the i3S team, which will receive more than 1.1 million euros, includes two doctoral students, Duarte Moura and Helena Ferreira, and will hire four more young researchers.

This funding from the European Innovation Council, say Inês Gonçalves, “validates the group’s recent commitment to an innovative area of research, driven by Andreia Pereira, which aims to generate energy for electronic cardiac devices, and allows to strengthen the team that is working in the development of biomaterials and medical devices for cardiovascular applications”. In addition, he adds, “we will thus have another major international project in the group to support the development and transfer of a technology from fundamental science to a product that could benefit society”.