| Treating the diseases that
cause blindness often involves frequent, painful injections directly into
the eyes, putting patients at risk for infection, cataracts, and torn retinas.
Dr. Ellis Meng, an assistant professor of biomedical and electrical engineering
at the University of Southern California’s Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems
(BMES) Engineering Research Center (ERC), has built an implantable pump
to deliver medications more safely and efficiently. For her work
on the pump she was named one of MIT Technology Review’s “35 Under 35”
2009 Young Innovators.
About the size of a watch
battery, Meng’s device uses a microfluidic pump to push medications from
a reservoir through a small tube and into the eye. A surgeon implants
the pump and reservoir on the outer surface of the eye, while only the
tube enters the eye itself. Unlike existing implants that must be
replaced periodically as they run out of drugs, Meng's is refillable. Instead
of weekly injections or monthly surgeries, a patient could make just one
visit to the operating room, dramatically reducing both pain and risk,
as well as cost.
Meng’s pump was co-developed
by ERC researchers Yu-Chong Tai and Mark Humayun (the Center Director)
in work supported first by an industrial partner through the BMES ERC and
later by NIH and foundation grants. In 2007 Humayun and the pump’s
co-developers at BMES founded a startup, Replenish, to further develop
and commercialize the technology, which will enter trials for FDA approval
in 2010. Meng is still testing the eye pump in animals but hopes
it can be tested in humans within five years. Progress on the work
was published in 2009 in Transactions of the American Ophthalmological
Society.
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