From biomedical engineering and medical device development to genetic research
and biological process technology, IT researchers play a major role in the growing
field of biotechnology. Here is a look at 13 of the most innovative projects
underway.
It was the toughest time of her life. Ten years ago, Liddy Howe
watched as her husband died while waiting for a liver transplant.
Now the leader of a support group for families of patients awaiting
an organ transplant, she says she is amazed at the medical advances
that help people who suffer from the ailments that killed her husband.
Gordon Howe died of liver failure due to viral infection.
"It's a happy time when I can tell someone in my group 'your
loved one can have more time.' No one told me that,” Howe says.
Professors and researchers at the University are developing a machine
that could aid patients like Gordon Howe. Scientists say that an
artificial liver, which uses living pig liver cells, could be the
bridge to a transplant. It could buy time for patients whose liver
has shut down and even give some livers enough time to heal, thereby
avoiding a transplant altogether.
"It should help the patient survive for a few days until a
donor organ is available or until the liver can recover on its own,”
says chemical engineering and materials science professor Wei-Shou
Hu, who leads the project along with surgery professor Frank Cerra,
the University's senior vice president for health sciences.
Thousands of patients could be helped by the device. According
to representatives of the American Liver Foundation, about 4,100
people receive a liver transplant each year and more than 8,000
people are on waiting lists for livers.
The new regulations set forth by the United Network of Organ Sharing
underscore the importance of finding alternatives to liver transplants.
The private group of transplant experts, which is overseen by the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has changed the rules
that determine which patients will receive liver transplants.
Because of the chronic shortage of livers for transplants, people
who suffer a sudden, unexpected illness will receive special priority
for transplant. These patients often have illnesses that disable
their livers, like mushroom poisoning or a rampant viral infection,
says Jill Iverson, an American Liver Foundation representative.
One of the body's most important organs, the liver removes toxins
from the blood and regulates the amounts of glucose, fat, and protein
that enter the blood stream. It performs synthetic functions, produces
molecules, detoxifies many compounds, and modifies the body's chemistry.
Liver ailments like fulminant viral hepatitis prevent the organ
from removing toxins from the blood. When toxins seep into the blood,
they cause the brain to swell and rupture, the most typical cause
of death from liver failure. The artificial liver takes over these
functions so the liver has time to heal.
The artificial liver uses pig liver cells to remove toxins from
the blood stream and functions like a kidney dialysis machine. Two
layers surround the pig cells - an outer casing of porous fibers
surrounds an inner layer of collagen gel, which contains the cells.
Blood is circulated out of the patient's body and around the outside
of the fibers, then returned to the body. Because only small molecules
can pass through the protective layers, the pig cells extract the
toxins without coming in contact with human blood.
This precaution is crucial, says Hu, because the human immune system
will attack and gradually kill the pig cells if they come into contact
with human blood. Furthermore, he says, the bioartificial liver's
design reduces the risk that endogenous retroviruses in the pig
cells might infect a patient. Even though the pig cells don't come
into direct contact with a patient's blood, Cerra says that project
scientists are developing tests to verify that retroviruses cannot
pass through the layers of gel and fiber and into the patient.
Research on the bioartificial liver began about ten years ago when
Hu and Cerra were faculty advisors to a student whose doctoral project
involved the artificial liver. Officials from the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration gave researchers permission to begin human trials
two years ago. This fall, scientists will again perform the tests
on more than a dozen patients who suffer from fulminant viral hepatitis.
"We hope to finish Phase I clinical trials in a year,”
Hu says. Phase I tests the machine for safety, and Phase II trials
determine if the machine works on patients. If human trials go well,
researchers hope the FDA will allow them to make the bioartificial
liver available for therapeutic use in four years.
Researchers are also collaborating with a Minnesota company to
conduct the human trials. Algenix Inc. has licensed the machine
from the University and is looking for investors to raise the $6.5
million necessary to support further testing.
Investors are important at this stage of the project because research
and development are the expensive steps in the invention of a medical
device, says Hu. The University has already spent about $2.7 million
on the project, most of which has come from federal grants, foundation
awards, and private sector support.
University researchers are not the only scientists who are developing
an artificial liver. A device developed by a Massachusetts company,
Circe, has already been tested on ten patients, and researchers
in Japan and Germany are also working on a similar machine.
However, Hu says, the University's device is superior because it
keeps the pig cells alive and functioning longer and, unlike the
other devices, prevents them from coming into contact with human
blood and tissue.
Iverson says that patients and families are excited by every advance
in the artificial liver field. “This is a chance for more people
to live a little longer, and I think it's a chance many people have
been waiting for."
