For people with Type 1 diabetes, developing hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, is an ever-present threat. When glucose levels become extremely low, it creates a life-threatening situation for which the standard treatment of care is injecting a hormone called glucagon.

As an emergency backup, for cases where patients may not realize that their blood sugar is dropping to dangerous levels, MIT engineers have designed an implantable reservoir that can remain under the skin and be triggered to release glucagon when blood sugar levels get too low.

This approach could also help in cases where hypoglycemia occurs during sleep, or for diabetic children who are unable to administer injections on their own.

“This is a small, emergency-event device that can be placed under the skin, where it is ready to act if the patient’s blood sugar drops too low,” says Daniel Anderson, a professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), and the senior author of the study. “Our goal was to build a device that is always ready to protect patients from low blood sugar. We think this can also help relieve the fear of hypoglycemia that many patients, and their parents, suffer from.”