Transforming drug delivery

Ellis Meng, an associate professor of biomedical and electrical engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, stands at the bold crossroads of medical research. She seeks new ways to deliver and monitor drugs for patients through nanotechnology and wireless communication.

Through a grant from the U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) and Qualcomm Wireless Health, Meng is working on a system for chronic pain medication for Army veterans, ultimately allowing them to return home and to productive lives.

“It is a challenge to monitor and control chronic pain in patients,” Meng said. “The patient often has to return to the doctor to adjust and assess the pain medication, and doctors need to ensure that pain medications are being delivered consistently and with the right dosage.”

Meng’s team is developing and testing an implanted drug delivery device connected to a wireless network by an external controller for remote monitoring and modification of drug dosage levels. The infusion pumps will allow physicians to track compliance and control of drug delivery regimens in patients remotely.

The challenge for Meng’s team is twofold: develop small, effective drug delivery systems and find ways for those systems to communicate wirelessly with health care teams. Current pumps used to administer drugs for chronic pain are the size of a hockey puck; Meng is developing pumps that are the size of three quarters stacked together - and they can be even smaller, if necessary.

The tiny pumps she is developing are more accurate and have a smaller footprint but similar capacities than traditional pumps. Meng’s goal is to revolutionize drug delivery by delivering the right dose at the right time and place so that patients can receive the maximum benefit without side effects.

The implications of Meng’s research extend well beyond chronic pain. The new medical frontier is moving toward targeted, specialized treatments for conditions ranging from eye disease to cancer to epilepsy. Her research could be used, for example, to deliver drugs directly to tumors for cancer patients or treatments for neurological disease that could avoid traditional and risky surgery.

“We are working to break the mold of what’s been done conventionally in terms of drug delivery - it doesn’t make sense to take a drug orally when a problem is very localized,” Meng said.

The TATRC/Qualcomm Wireless Health Innovation Challenge represents an important step for Meng and her colleagues in the ongoing quest to transform health care through engineering. “The challenge awardees are pioneering new breakthroughs in health science that could significantly benefit the U.S. military community,” said Don Jones, vice president of wireless health strategy and market development at Qualcomm Labs. “Qualcomm is pleased to help enable these important research projects, which align closely with our goal of speeding the diagnosis, treatment and self-management of health conditions via cellular wireless networks.”


Source: USC Viterbi School of Engineering

IBV evaluates the anthropometric data of Cristiano Ronaldo

The Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia (IBV) is the only Spanish research center has participated in a documentary that examines the physical and mental qualities of Cristiano Ronaldo.

Specifically, the IBV researcher, Dr. Luis Garcés, has scanned Cristiano Ronaldo in three dimensions to obtain its anthropometric measurements. The data obtained from Ronaldo confirmed that his body balance of height and muscle mass are those that allow him to excel different aspects as such as jumping, speed or kicking the ball.

The 3D data was performed with a cabin that records by an optical system the body three-dimensional surface. This technology allows to obtain hundreds of thousands of points on the body surface in seconds without coming into contact with him.

According to the researcher Luis Garcés, Cristiano Ronaldo concentrates muscle mass on the trunk and thighs, making the mass of the lower extremities relatively minor compared to the athletes of the same height.

This is a competitive advantage because allows Ronaldo to move faster to run, jump or kick the ball with less physical demands. Furthermore, "he excels for having a high center of gravity, ie, long thin legs in relation to the mass of his torso. These characteristics are similar to the sprinter Usain Bolt. Thanks to them, it achieves a greater stride length and powerful motion of the lower limbs".

The Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia is a research center that has become an international expert in anthropometric characterization of the population and the transfer of this information to the ergonomic design of products. Since 1994 it has worked on the creation of Spanish and European population anthropometric databases and its application in the development of tools design and ergonomic evaluation of products.

In addition, the IBV provides an Athlete Evaluation Service that uses a set of biomechanical tests and technological tools, applied to the analysis and study of the many variables surrounding the sport. These tests allow IBV to assess the athlete's physical condition and offering the possibility of obtaining the evolution of different objective variables of interest to improve the athlete training.

Source: Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia (IBV)

New MRI technique could mean fewer breast biopsies in high-risk women

A University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineer and colleagues have developed a method that, applied in MRI scans of the breast, could spare some women with increased breast cancer risk the pain and stress of having to endure a biopsy of a questionable lump or lesion.

The universal technology will give radiologists greater confidence in visually classifying a lesion as malignant or benign.

The American Cancer Society recommends that women with certain breast cancer risk factors - including inherited genetic mutations, family or personal history of breast cancer, or previous radiation therapy to the chest - receive an annual MRI screening in addition to their yearly mammogram.

During a breast MRI, which lasts about a half hour, the technician injects a contrast agent into a vein in the patient's arm. Over time, the contrast agent flows throughout the body, including the breasts. Because they are growing quickly, cancerous lesions often have immature vasculature, and the contrast agent flows in and "leaks" out quickly. Conversely, benign lesions show more gradual in and out flow.

"The tricky ones are the ones that enhance quickly and then fall off more slowly," says Wally Block, a UW-Madison associate professor of biomedical engineering and medical physics. "Many of these lesions turn out to be difficult to classify and lead to biopsy."

Yet, it turns out that with the right kind of MRI scan, radiologists can visually identify a cancerous lesion based on characteristics about its shape. For example, breaks or interruptions in a lesion can indicate a benign fibroadenoma. Lumps with smooth edges often are benign, while those with jagged edges can signal cancer.

To generate the kind of crisp, three-dimensional images necessary for such a diagnosis, Block, UW-Madison radiology associate professor Fred Kelcz and graduate student Catherine Moran are capitalizing on their unique MRI data-acquisition method.

An MR image is made up of thousands of smaller pieces of information. The conventional data-acquisition method gathers that information slowly, and it's designed to be viewed from a single imaging plane. "What people do now is they compromise," says Block. "They don't get resolution in the other planes to make it a reasonable scan time. We found a way around that."

With the team's powerful technique, an MRI machine acquires data radially and generates a high-resolution, three-dimensional image that radiologists can turn, slice and view from many perspectives - enabling them to study a lesion's physical characteristics more carefully. Machines equipped with the technique also acquire more data in less time.

In addition, the method also makes it possible for radiologists to view fat images and water images separately, which is particularly useful because fat composes a large portion of the breast. "Rarely is disease associated with fat," says Block. "Most of the time radiologists are concentrating on water images, but sometimes our fat images of the breast are also useful. The boundaries of a lesion often stand out very clearly when embedded in fat."

Block and his colleagues currently are gathering data on the efficacy of the technique. They have tested the method on 20 patients at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and have shared it with colleagues at the University of Toronto for additional assessment. They also are working with Michigan State University researchers to test the technique.

Collaborating with Scott Reeder, a UW-Madison assistant professor of biomedical engineering and radiology, Block and colleagues also are refining ways to image both breasts simultaneously — a development that could slash scan time and free valuable MRI space for additional patients. "If you have a screening procedure that you want people to participate in regularly, you want to make it convenient for them," says Block.

Funding from the Wallace H. Coulter Translational Research Partnership in biomedical engineering at UW-Madison supported the research, as well as grants and in-kind support from GE Healthcare. In addition to Block, Kelcz, Moran and Reeder, UW-Madison collaborators also include research scientist Alexey Samsonov and assistant researcher Ethan Brodsky.

Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Drug-loaded brain electrode could prevent seizures

Neuroscientists implant microelectrode arrays in brains to eavesdrop on - and sometimes influence - the electrical activity of neurons. Why not chemically influence the brain alongside this electrical manipulation, thought Xinyan Tracy Cui at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and her colleagues.

A new polymer-covered electrode has the potential to monitor and deliver drugs to out-of-sync brain cells. If trials in animals are successful, it could one day help people to control epilepsy.

So the team coated microelectrodes with an electrically conductive polypyrrole film. Then they loaded pockets within the film with different drugs and neurotransmitters such as glutamate, GABA and dopamine, and attached the arrays to samples of rat brain tissue.Applying an electrical current to the polymer caused it to change shape and release its drug cargo, which then acted on surrounding cells. Cui is currently working on replicating this demonstration in living rodents.

Polypyrrole-coated microelectrode arrays, like ordinary arrays, could not only monitor neurons for unusual electrical activity but also deliver electrical impulses to keep neurons firing at the right tempo, like the brain pacemakers sometimes used to treat epilepsy. With the polypyrrole coating, however, microelectrode arrays could release drugs when they detect unusual activity – such as the haphazard electrical firing that characterises a seizure. Because electrodes reach into specific regions of the brain, the drugs would affect only neighbouring neurons.

"Theoretically you could use the electrode arrays to monitor neural activity and once you detect a sign of a seizure you could pump anticonvulsive drugs at just the right location," Cui says.

One difficulty, however, is that once the polymer sheds its drugs it has no more to offer. One solution might be to add carbon nanotubes as drug reservoirs.

"We have the proof of concept for a simple but powerful technology that can be used with a variety of different drugs or biochemical molecules," Cui says. "Because of its versatility, the potential applications are limitless."

Saleem Nicola at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City says he is impressed with the study, but notes that in Cui's tests some of the powerful drugs that inhibit neural activity did not seem as effective as one might expect, although it is unclear why.

"In theory it's a great idea, but ultimately we want to see it working in electrodes implanted in the brain for a fair amount of time," he says. "This is a first pass, but it could be extremely powerful if it lives up to its promise."

Source: Journal of Neural Engineering