Biomedical Engineering
Developing new antibiotics in a week on the horizon
Currently it takes up to five or six years to create a new antibiotic. With many bacteria resistant to the standard regime of antibiotic treatments, this timetable is too slow. Dr. George Georgiou is developing a new technique to create antibiotics specific to new infections or bacteria in one week. This fast response time and “bacterial specific antibiotics” could defend against a sudden infectious outbreak, as well as military attacks using biological warfare.
Photo: http://www.engr.utexas.edu/news/action_shots/pages/GeorgiouRraA.cfm
Scanning for cancer eliminates need for invasive biopsies
Tissue biopsies for pre-cancerous lesions in the body may soon be replaced with a painless optical scan. The process involves shining a tiny, low-powered laser on tissue to excite molecules within the tissue. When the molecules get rid of the extra energy by emitting the light particles, the optical detectors measure the amount of light deflected. Physicians then compare the measurements with the normal range for healthy tissue. This process which would replace the common PAP smear’s screening for cervical cancer and be conducted in the physicians office, has been licensed and is currently in the approval process with the FDA. Dr. Rebecca Richards-Kortum, professor of electrical and computer engineering, is now developing her optical screening technique for ovarian cancer.
Photo: http://www.engr.utexas.edu/news/action_shots/pages/rrk.cfm
Regrowing severed nerves successful with plastic scaffolds and electrical stimulation
Dr. Christine Schmidt’s research team is pursuing various avenues of research to coax severed nerves to regrow. Previous research has shown that an electrical charge helps stimulate extension of nerve cells. Schmidt and her students are investigating polypyrrole, an electrically conducting plastic that could provide a support to help guide the ends of severed nerves. A patch on the patient’s skin would be used to deliver a slight electrical charge over the injured area, which would stimulate the damaged nerve to regrow across the structure.
Photo: http://www.engr.utexas.edu/news/action_shots/pages/highTechAustin2000.cfm
New fluid makes skin transparent to improve physicians’ diagnoses
UT biomedical engineers have developed a method to make sections of skin transparent, which may allow physicians to view blood vessels or tumors beneath the skin without incision. The procedure, developed for use with laser light sources, involves the use of a fluid that dehydrates and optically matches tissue components to prevent or reduce scattering of light within skin. This replacement fluid improves visibility through the skin by a factor of ten. By reducing the scattering of light, the fluid creates less distortion and enhances diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Led by biomedical engineering professor Dr. Ashley Welch, the research team’s work has been published in Lasers in Surgery and Medicine, and is currently undergoing patent review. A second project on tissue welding has been tested in vivo.
Freezing organs for transplanting nears reality
Patients awaiting organ transplants will benefit from breakthroughs in organ freezing methods developed at UT. Dr. Ken Diller and his graduate students have frozen a portion of the human pancreas that produces insulin and provided it for successful transplantation. The transplantation allowed a patient formerly suffering from juvenile diabetes to live insulin-injection free. Freezing organs, or cryopreservation would eliminate patients’ sometimes fatal wait for a compatible donor whose organ currently must be transplanted within hours of removal. Diller predicts freezing entire organs will be possible within 10 years.
Photo: http://www.engr.utexas.edu/news/action_shots/pages/DillerHeatShockProteinLab.cfm
Amputees to benefit from new prosthetics studies
Lower-limb amputees may soon be walking more easily, thanks to new studies of prosthetics by Dr. Rick Neptune, a mechanical engineering assistant professor at UT Austin. With a 2004 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation, Neptune will create computer models of amputee walking patterns while using a prosthesis. Neptune says prosthetic designs have shown limited success in improving an amputee's ability to walk. Engineers have been unable to identify the relationship between the prosthesis design and the user's resulting gait pattern because of the incredible adaptability of the human nervous system, he says. Neptune and his research group plan to use computer models of amputees walking to understand how individual muscles work together in synergy to produce the gait pattern. These models will allow Neptune and his group to look for causal relationships they can't identify experimentally. Eventually, the researchers will make prototypes of prostheses and have amputees use them and assess their performance.
Photo: http://www.engr.utexas.edu/news/action_shots/pages/NeptuneHipResearch.cfm
Non-invasive glaucoma test developed
Dr. H. Grady Rylander III, biomedical engineering professor at UT Austin, has developed a non-invasive test for glaucoma, the leading cause of blindness.
When a patient contracts glaucoma, nerve fiber layer in the retina thins and stops working. This causes the eyes’ ganglion cells to die. Early glaucoma detection is crucial because this irreversible ganglion cell death often leads to blindness.
Using a compact, portable device, doctors can measure the amount of activity between neurons in the eye, allowing for early detection of the disease. Usually, glaucoma isn’t diagnosed until half the nerve fibers in the eye are destroyed. The device uses a fiber probe and a laser to quickly measure nerve activity and detect nerve swelling.
Although the device was invented to detect glaucoma, Rylander says it may aid in the early detection of other neural diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis. The method is also applicable to study the functionality of all nervous tissue, including the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves.
Biomedical engineer seeking to replace insulin injections with pills
Dr. Nicholas Peppas, professor of biomedical engineering, chemical engineering and pharmaceutics, has made advances in his development of the first insulin delivery systems proven to work via ingestion . Taking insulin orally, rather than by injection, improves the likelihood a diabetic patient will take the medicine regularly as needed; however, because of the harsh conditions of the human digestive system, generally less than 0.1 percent of an oral dose of insulin reaches the bloodstream.
He and his research group have developed a new class of oral delivery vehicles. These “hydrogels” encase the insulin and provide protection from the conditions of the gastrointestinal tract due to a behavior called complexation. At a low pH, similar to the environment of the stomach, complexes form a mesh that surrounds and protects the insulin from outside conditions. At a higher pH, as found in the upper small intestine, the complexes spread out and the mesh swells, releasing the insulin. Additionally, these gels improve the medicine’s movement across the intestinal tissue.
Peppas’ research team also minimized the delivery system’s effect on surrounding cells. Engineers used polyacrylic acid and poly ethylene glycol (known as absorption enhancers) to create tiny “nanospheres” that protect the insulin as it makes its way through the stomach and into the small intestine. The nanospheres proved to have much less effect on normal intracellular enzyme activity than other commonly studied absorption enhancers. Other enhancers are normally applied in a solution and negatively affect the mucosal cell membrane or poison cells, depending on their type and/or concentration. The nanospheres successfully deliver insulin into the small intestine.