On Jul. 9, 2025, MIT engineers announced they have designed an implantable reservoir that can remain under the skin and be triggered to release glucagon when blood sugar levels get too low.

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.

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.

The researchers showed that this device could also be used to deliver emergency doses of epinephrine, a drug that is used to treat heart attacks and can also prevent severe allergic reactions, including anaphylactic shock. To make it easier to counteract hypoglycemia, the MIT team set out to design an emergency device that could be triggered either by the person using it, or automatically by a sensor.

Each device can carry either one or four doses of glucagon, and it also includes an antenna tuned to respond to a specific frequency in the radiofrequency range. That allows it to be remotely triggered to turn on a small electrical current, which is used to heat the shape-memory alloy. When the temperature reaches the 40-degree threshold, the slab bends into a U shape, releasing the contents of the reservoir.