Monday, November 17, 2008
29-year-old Tejal Desai, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s department of bioengineering, is working on taking us there. Desai is using MEMS — Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems or micro fabrication — technology to create infinitesimally small tools made of silicone and silica to help treat diseases better.
Early Challenges
Desai was always interested in applying technology to treat medical and biological problems. Bioengineering was her undergraduate major at Brown University and she became involved in MEMS as a Ph.D. student at the University of California at Berkeley. The technology was already in use to make biosensors, but Desai wanted to take it a step further and deliver therapy with it. However, many scoffed at the idea of using MEMS in the way Desai intended.
“Five years ago people thought it was crazy science fiction and they were saying, ‘Oh, this is very risky and you shouldn’t be doing this,’” she remembers.
In 1998, UIC hired her as one of the first three faculty members of the new bioengineering department. In 1999 Desai was named one of the country’s top 100 researchers in MIT’s Technology Review Magazine. Desai’s aim to push the limits of technology finally led to the creation of three distinct areas of research, all based on MEMS — the “nanoporous biocapsule,” “drug delivery systems” and “tissue engineering.”
Nanoporous Biocapsule
These capsules have miniscule pores — about 20 nanometers in diameter — and insulin or other neurosecretory cells can be placed inside them. These pores allow insulin to pass into the bloodstream. But any foreign object introduced in the body has the potential to be rejected, similar to a transplant process. Integrated circuit technology, however, is able to create such minute pores that the immune system fails to attack the insulin or any other cell inside the capsule. Additionally, the secretion of insulin is consistent with biological changes.
“Secretions are very controlled and can correspond to your blood sugar level,” Desai says.
Drug Delivery Systems
This oral capsule comprises multiple reservoirs — up to 100 — that can contain other types of drugs.
“What this allows you to do is to take one capsule that has lots of different drugs that may be released at the same time or at different times,” Desai explains. “We can control the shape of those particles and the size to a few microns.”
So, an ordinary aspirin capsule now can release a variety of drugs, which can improve its effectiveness. Desai hopes to use her creation in cancer therapeutics. IMED, a startup, is funding Desai’s endeavor and will be able to license the technology once it is ready for mass manufacturing. Desai expects that will take between five and seven years.
Tissue Engineering
One of the most difficult tasks that scientists face is studying cardiac cells on a petri dish in a lab. Recognizing that they are in an alien environment, the cells stop functioning. But Desai’s nano tools create a setting where the cells are tricked into thinking they are inside a human body, surrounded by heart tissue.
“We’ve created little three dimensional scaffolds that have features that try to mimic what you would see in a heart,” Desai says. “So there are valleys, grooves, pegs and projections that actually look like a heart tissue if you take it apart.”
The person who benefited most when the cells functioned as Desai expected was a colleague in the bioengineering department, Brenda Russell, who was frustrated at being unable to study heart cells functioning as they would in their true environment. When Desai’s experiment succeeded, Russell was overjoyed.
“It was great — I was excited,” Desai says. “I was more excited because she [Russell] was so happy. So, what I did and what I created actually helped out another colleague.”
Desai recently received a five-year, $2 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institute of Health for developing the research on tissue engineering.
A Woman Scientist
Soon after Desai joined UIC’s bioengineering department, during her first faculty meeting at the College of Engineering, a faculty member walked up to her and asked her to make some more coffee.
“I was a new professor, but nobody knew that I was,” Desai laughs, good-naturedly. “I just told him that I didn’t want to miss the meeting.”
What Keeps Her Ticking
Desai’s age is one source of her indefatigability and enthusiasm. She admits quite candidly that she isn’t cynical yet and hopes to carry forward the same energy in the years to come. That same energy had a different outlet in high school and college. Back then she was an avid writer, penning thoughts about her experiences as a child of Indian parents growing up in America.
But a summer in New York proved to be a turning point. It was in 1989, her senior year in high school, when Desai attended a summer program for women in science sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Participants debated what it is to be a woman in science and met people in the industry.
“That was the pivot point,” she recalls.
Desai says that she wants to have lasting impact on science rather than be just an academic. Although teaching passively may not inspire her enough, her students do. They are why she is not in industry or a private lab, she points out.
“It’s great to see them going from not really understanding what you are doing, to actually being very involved and thinking about their own ideas,” Desai says with pleasure.
What’s Next in the Cards?
Desai is moving to Boston University. She will be setting up a center focusing on BIOMEMS and build it up just like she did at UIC. She describes the new challenge with eager anticipation.
"It’s a very exciting opportunity, but at the same time it’s starting new, having to re-establish your reputation in a place that has a high academic culture,” Desai says. “Hopefully I will make a success out of this new center, this new endeavor.” si
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