FROM MIT NEWS
Research update: Continuous medical monitoring
Tiny 'microworms' could be implanted under the skin to give readout of blood sugar levels or other biomedical information.
Researchers at MIT and Northeastern have come up with a new system for monitoring biomedical indicators — such as levels of sodium or glucose in the blood — that could someday lead to implantable devices that would allow, for example, people with diabetes to check their blood sugar just by glancing at an area of skin.
A number of researchers have developed microparticle-based systems — hollow, microscopic particles filled with specific chemicals — for monitoring biomedical conditions or for the selective delivery of drugs to certain organs or areas of the body. But one drawback of these systems is that the particles are small enough to be swept away from the initial site over time. The new system involves a different kind of microparticle that can avoid this problem.
While traditional particles are spherical, the new particles are shaped like long tubes. The tubes’ narrow width, which is comparable to that of the previously studied microparticles, keeps the tubes’ contents in close proximity to blood or body tissue, making it easy for the particles to sense and respond to chemical or other conditions in their surroundings. The tubes’ relatively greater length keeps the tubes very well anchored in place for long-term monitoring, perhaps for months on end.
The particles eventually could be used to monitor the glucose levels of diabetics or the salt levels of those with a condition that can cause swings in blood salt concentrations.
The new findings are being reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in a paper published online in January and soon to appear in the print version. It was co-authored by Karen Gleason, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT; Heather Clark, professor of pharmaceutical science at Northeastern University; MIT postdoctoral researcher Gozde Ozaydin-Ince; and Northeastern doctoral student J. Matthew Dubach.
The process of creating the new nanoparticles is an offshoot of Gleason’s work on a method of coating materials by vaporizing the coating material and letting it deposit on a surface to be coated. In work published last month, she and her co-workers had shown that this technique — called chemical vapor deposition (CVD) — could be used to coat a material containing microscopic pores, thus making the pores even smaller and giving them a surface that could respond to the chemical properties of materials passing through them.
READ MORE
Research update: Continuous medical monitoring
Tiny 'microworms' could be implanted under the skin to give readout of blood sugar levels or other biomedical information.
Researchers at MIT and Northeastern have come up with a new system for monitoring biomedical indicators — such as levels of sodium or glucose in the blood — that could someday lead to implantable devices that would allow, for example, people with diabetes to check their blood sugar just by glancing at an area of skin.
A number of researchers have developed microparticle-based systems — hollow, microscopic particles filled with specific chemicals — for monitoring biomedical conditions or for the selective delivery of drugs to certain organs or areas of the body. But one drawback of these systems is that the particles are small enough to be swept away from the initial site over time. The new system involves a different kind of microparticle that can avoid this problem.
While traditional particles are spherical, the new particles are shaped like long tubes. The tubes’ narrow width, which is comparable to that of the previously studied microparticles, keeps the tubes’ contents in close proximity to blood or body tissue, making it easy for the particles to sense and respond to chemical or other conditions in their surroundings. The tubes’ relatively greater length keeps the tubes very well anchored in place for long-term monitoring, perhaps for months on end.
The particles eventually could be used to monitor the glucose levels of diabetics or the salt levels of those with a condition that can cause swings in blood salt concentrations.
The new findings are being reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in a paper published online in January and soon to appear in the print version. It was co-authored by Karen Gleason, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT; Heather Clark, professor of pharmaceutical science at Northeastern University; MIT postdoctoral researcher Gozde Ozaydin-Ince; and Northeastern doctoral student J. Matthew Dubach.
The process of creating the new nanoparticles is an offshoot of Gleason’s work on a method of coating materials by vaporizing the coating material and letting it deposit on a surface to be coated. In work published last month, she and her co-workers had shown that this technique — called chemical vapor deposition (CVD) — could be used to coat a material containing microscopic pores, thus making the pores even smaller and giving them a surface that could respond to the chemical properties of materials passing through them.
READ MORE
RSS Feed