If youve ever glanced at the back of a medicine packet, or read through that tightly folded, microprint advice slip that comes wrapped around your blister pack of seemingly innocuous tablets, you could be forgiven for wondering if drug-based medicine is a bit of an imprecise science.

Youve got a headache, so naturally you reach for the paracetamol. An hour later, youre feeling much better. Unless youre very unlucky and suddenly develop a fever, or nausea, or unusual bleeding or bruising (as opposed to the normal, everyday kind). Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRIs) could literally save your life if you suffer from depression. Unless you then drink grapefruit juice, which can effectively boost the dosage of an antidepressant from therapeutic to toxic.

According to Kris Famm, president of Galvani Bioelectronics, about 90 per cent of the work that goes into developing a drug isnt focused on treating a disease, but on working out how to prevent or mitigate the adverse effects the drug might have on other parts of the body. His answer to this problem? Bioelectronics: implants that deliver electrical impulses directly to the nerves that control particular organs, treating a patients condition while bypassing the brain and circulatory system altogether.

More than two billion people suffer from chronic diseases where bioelectronic medicines could one day be part of the therapeutic solution, says Famm. Our bodies use electrical signals in nerves to tune their functions; our society uses the same principles to control devices and systems all around us these worlds will [inevitably] meet.

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Bioelectronics, as a new field of medicine, presents challenges - not least how to power the devices after they are implanted (though in the future Famm suggests we might charge implants wirelessly, as we now can with phones; or even with glucose from the patients body or energy generated by their movements, like a self-winding watch). But the potential advantages over traditional molecular medicine are clear: no side-effects, no long trial-and-error periods adjusting dosages, and all the grapefruit juice you can drink. And Galvani Bioelectronics has some influential backers behind it - the company was launched in 2016 by Googles parent company Alphabet and pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline, and backed by investment of up to 540 million over the next seven years.

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This Alphabet-backed lab wants to replace drugs with electrical implants - Wired.co.uk