01.10.01 - Tiny MEMS help the body

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Tiny MEMS help the body

10 Jan 2001 | The design of microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS - tiny devices and sensors deployed in the body to deliver drugs at precisely timed intervals, monitor blood sugars and brain activity, or regulate heart beats and blood flow - will be one field of endeavor within the new Bioengineering, Biotechnology and Quantitative Biomedical Research Institute. Berkeley excels in this field.

Take the work of Dorian Liepmann, a Berkeley mechanical engineer and member of the new QB3 institute. He has chipped away at countless miniature devices to produce everything from motors to tweezers for disk drives, chip manufacturing and other high-tech needs. But his current work revolves around development of a micro-sized skin patch, just a hair thicker than a credit card, to treat diabetics and victims of Alzheimer's disease.

The tiny device packs some tiny batteries, a reservoir for a dry drug, a wet reservoir to carry fluid for diluting the drug, tiny pumps, valves and needles, and a micro fluidic mixing device. When worn, insulin patients, for example, will receive a slow, metered dose of medicine.

The key to successful MEMS devices lies in how the body metabolizes medicines, he said. When medicines are absorbed through the skin rather than taken orally, they bypass and put less strain on organs that filter toxins, such as the liver and kidneys. People on lifelong medications, such as those being treated for high blood pressure, do not run the long-term risk of liver or kidney damage when opting for patches over pills.

Luke Lee, an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering, specializes in a different subfield of bio-MEMS. His current research projects include microscopic imaging tools that could be manufactured directly on a computer chip or on biocompatible, polymer-based laboratory-on-a-chip devices.

His work in bio-MEMS has already caught the media's attention, both here and overseas, recently. He was featured as one of five "leaders to watch in science and technology" in a program that aired on New Year's Day 2000 on prime time Korean Television.