For decades, doctors have treated diabetes by telling the body how to handle glucose — through diet, exercise, pills, or insulin injections. Now, a team at ETH Zurich has built an implant that removes the sugar directly, using electricity instead of drugs, WELT reported. The device, called Echo, converted excess glucose into a compound excreted in urine when tested in diabetic mice, normalizing their blood sugar within 60 to 90 minutes and helping them lose up to 10 percent of their body weight over six weeks.
The system, detailed in the journal Science, works as a closed loop: a continuous glucose sensor on the arm detects high blood sugar, signals a smartphone via Bluetooth, and wirelessly activates the implant beneath the skin. Unlike earlier experimental implants, Echo contains no living cells or enzymes — only graphite felt embedded with gold nanostructures and platinum particles that catalyze the chemical conversion when current flows.
Mice normalized glucose in under 90 minutes and lost weight
Researchers led by Martin Fussenegger, a professor in ETH Zurich’s Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel, first tested Echo in five liters of glucose-rich fluid — roughly the blood volume of an adult human — and found the catalyst could break down the sugar at that scale, factum Magazin reported. They then implanted the 3-centimeter device in overweight mice with Type 2 diabetes.
Within an hour of activation, elevated blood sugar dropped and stabilized at normal levels. Over six weeks, the animals lost up to 10 percent of their body weight and showed lower triglyceride levels, with no episodes of hypoglycemia during 12-day and two-week automated control tests, ad-hoc-news.de reported. The catalyst remained functional for up to three months.
How the closed-loop system filters sugar with electricity
The implant operates at 13.56 MHz, an internationally reserved frequency for medical devices, and receives power wirelessly from outside the body — similar to how a smartwatch charges, Fussenegger explained to TARA24. When the arm sensor detects glucose above a set threshold after a meal, the control unit activates the implant. The electrical current drives the graphite-gold-platinum surface to convert glucose into gluconate, which about 80 percent of is excreted through the kidneys in urine, TARA24 reported. Once glucose returns to the target range, the system shuts off automatically, preventing dangerous lows.
Experts see progress but flag the gap between mice and humans
Independent diabetologist Andreas Birkenfeld of the University Hospital Tübingen called the approach “really exciting” but cautioned that the decisive question is how it projects to humans, WELT reported. Existing medications already remove sugar via the kidneys; the innovation here is electronic control, he noted. Siegfried Ussar of the Helmholtz Center Munich emphasized that, unlike unregulated drug inhibitors, the device can theoretically be precisely controlled — though it does not fix the underlying insulin deficiency and would not serve as a standalone therapy.
The hurdles are substantial. Humans have far larger blood volumes than mice, and researchers do not yet know how large the implant would need to be or whether multiple units would be required. In the mouse trials, ketone bodies rose — a byproduct of fat breakdown — raising concerns about how the system would affect people with advanced diabetes or existing ketoacidosis, Birkenfeld said. Infection risk, device longevity, and automatic-control failures also remain unstudied in humans.
Two to five years away, or a statistical long shot?
Fussenegger told TARA24 that while an exact timeline is tricky, “ten years should not be necessary,” with hope resting on two to five years. Yet the statistical reality is sobering: roughly 90 percent of therapies that succeed in lab rodents fail when moved to humans. The ETH team plans next to test Echo in larger animals such as pigs and sheep before any human trials, ad-hoc-news.de reported.
Researchers outline animal testing phases
When will the Echo implant be tested in humans?
No human trials have begun. The ETH Zurich team plans to move to larger animals — specifically pigs and sheep — first, and Fussenegger has suggested a two-to-five-year horizon for potential medical product development, though most rodent-successful therapies fail in humans.
How is this different from current diabetes medications?
Drugs like SGLT2 inhibitors already cause the kidneys to excrete glucose, but they cannot be switched on and off on demand. Echo is the first system to remove glucose electronically, controlled automatically by a continuous glucose monitor, Birkenfeld told WELT.
What happens to the sugar once the implant converts it?
The glucose is converted to gluconate, and about 80 percent of that compound is excreted through the kidneys in urine, according to TARA24.
Whether an electronic implant can safely scale from a mouse’s bloodstream to a human body remains the unanswered question at the heart of this research.