Sangeeta Chavan, PhD (professor in the Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes and one of the senior authors on the paper) said, “There are no long-lasting clinical treatments in tackling diabetes. This exciting research is a major step forward to harness a novel approach of using ultrasound stimulation and bioelectronic medicine to alleviate and potentially reverse a disease that affects millions worldwide.”

Stavros Zanos, MD, PhD (associate professor in the Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes and one of the senior authors on the paper) said “In addition to demonstrating a potential therapy for diabetes, this paper begins to mechanistically bridge short-term and long-term physiological and metabolic effects of neuromodulation, a missing link in how we understand, optimize and deploy clinically neuromodulation therapies.”


Raimund Herzog, MD, MHS, is an associate professor (endocrinology), in the Department of Internal Medicine at Yale School of Medicine and a member of the Yale Diabetes Research Center. "Even though we already have a large variety of antidiabetic medications to treat high glucose levels available to us, we are always looking for new ways to improve insulin sensitivity in diabetes. Unfortunately, there are currently only very few drugs that can do that. If our ongoing clinicals trials confirm the promise of the pre-clinical studies reported in this paper, and ultrasound can be used to lower both insulin and glucose levels, ultrasound neuromodulation would represent an exciting and entirely new addition to the current treatment options for our patients."

Dino Di Carlo, study co-author and bioengineering profressor at the UCLA Samueloi School of Engineering, said, “Our studies indicate that the focused ultrasound activates neurons through ion channels that are sensitive to mechanical forces. This is a completely new avenue to interface with our body and treat disease.”

Damian S. Shin, Ph.D., interim chair and associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics at Albany Medical College, said, “The findings from this collaborative effort are really exciting. If substantiated, our work could lead to an innovative, non-invasive way to treat Type-2 diabetes. We’re proud to have helped lay the foundation for future clinical studies.”

Victoria Cotero (the lead author of the study from GE) noted that the findings reported in Nature Biomedical Engineering showed that GE’s non-invasive stimulation technique using ultrasound was effective in both genetic and diet-induced models of Type- 2 diabetes. In both cases, the treatment was able to improve both glucose tolerance and insulin resistance.

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