There are ideas that seem straight out of science fiction until someone builds them with surgical precision. One of them could be to have a device implanted under the skin, silent, almost invisible, that It does not store medications… but rather it manufactures and administers them within the body itself. This device would have a place in Star Trek space travel, no doubt.

Well, that is, in essence, what an international team led by Northwestern University together with Rice and Carnegie Mellon universities is proposing: a “living pharmacy” capable of producing drugs continuously for weeks. The study, published in Cell Press, describes a system that not only works, but also solves one of the big problems of this type of technology.

The device has a name that, once again, takes us to epic literature: HOBIT (short for Bioelectronic Hybrid Oxygenation System for Implantable Therapy) and yet, It is not fantasy since behind it there is a deeply biological logic.

Inside there are no tablets or liquids, but genetically modified cells to manufacture therapeutic molecules. In the experiment, these cells produce three very different substances: an antibody against HIV, a peptide similar to those used to treat type 2 diabetes and leptin, a key hormone in regulating appetite and metabolism.

Three medications, three different biological rhythms, coexisting in the same system. The challenge here is not only to produce them, but to maintain them. Because biological therapies have a known problem: their half-life. Some disappear from the body in hours; others, in days. Maintaining stable levels often requires repeated injections or complex delivery systems. This is where HOBIT changes the rules of the game.

“Traditional biological drugs tend to have very different half-lives, which makes it difficult to maintain stable levels of multiple therapies – confirms Jonathan Rivnay, one of those responsible for the study -. As our implanted ‘cell factories’ produce these compounds continuously, and thanks to the oxygenation technology that keeps the cells alive, we can sustain constant levels of several treatments at the same time”.

But there is an even more fascinating, almost invisible detail that has limited this type of device for years: oxygen. When cells are encapsulated within an implant, they compete for a basic resource to survive. If they don’t get enough oxygen, they die. And with them, the ability to produce drugs. It is such a fundamental problem that it has held back the development of these “living pharmacies” for decades.

The solution of HOBIT is very simple, almost obvious: manufacturing oxygen within the device itself. To do this, the system incorporates a small electrochemical generator capable of splitting water molecules and releasing oxygen right where the cells need it. It does not depend on the body’s environment, nor on natural diffusion. It is a local, constant, almost custom-made supply.

“We are producing oxygen directly where the cells need it – adds Rivnay -. “It allows us to work with much higher cell densities in a much smaller space.”

The result is measurable. In animal models (specifically mice), devices with this oxygenation system maintained stable levels of the three compounds for at least 30 days. On the other hand, implants without oxygen quickly lost effectiveness: some molecules disappeared in less than a week.

At the end of the experiment, the difference was almost brutal: about 65% of the cells were still alive in the oxygenated devicescompared to just 20% in conventional ones. What emerges from this work is not only a new device, but a new way of thinking about pharmacology and, secondarily, medicine.

Not as something that is administered from outside, in specific doses, but as a continuous process, integrated into the body itself. A therapy that does not depend on remembering a pill or going to a consultation, but rather works in the background, like another organ.

There’s still a way to go. Next steps include test the technology in larger animal models and explore specific applicationssuch as pancreatic cell-based therapies for diabetes. But the direction is clear.

“We are starting to see how bioelectronics and cell therapy can work together on the same platform – concludes Rivnay -. As these technologies evolve, devices like this They could act as programmable drug factories within the body, capable of delivering complex therapies in ways that are simply not possible today.”

Perhaps, in a few years, the pharmacy will cease to be a place we go to and it becomes something we carry inside us.