Documents / Report
This Defense Intelligence Agency reference document, dated 31 March 2010 (DIA-08-1003-020), was one of a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2009 under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) program. It surveys biosensors and BioMEMS, covering brain-implanted neuroelectrodes, drug-delivery pumps, implantable glucose sensors, brain-machine interfaces, retinal prostheses, microfluidic lab chips, NASA cell culture systems, and microcantilever sensors. It concludes that the field is expanding rapidly toward nanomechanical systems.
“The Advance”8 pages
UNCLASSIFIED/ ,"F'ilA 'ilFFUil.-ik lalliF 'il•lklf Methods of creating a more sustained blood concentration of a given drug are desirable to increase drug effectiveness. Similarly there are other medical applications for controlled-release drug-delivery systems, such as that for insulin, where it is desirable to maintain a more sustained dose over a period of hours. There has been the application of MEMS technologies in the creation of better ways to deliver drugs to the human body by way of small implantable reservoirs that can slowly release their drug over a prolonged period of time. Figure 6 shows a MEMS-based insulin-delivery pump for the treatment of diabetes. This is perhaps one of the largest applications of BioMEMS in medicine. Subcutaneous drug delivery Deb,otec:--. p1ezce,'ectrrc ..1--'L"'l.'1..J-•..........-ll"..... ~ Jl'A,I • MEMS technology using Si and glass f'iip biocompatibility • Precise control of nl volumes • Prevent under/overdosing and detect occlusions, other problems • Small size: 114th the size of existing monitors • Proprietary hermetic packaging • In the U.S. alone. 60 m1ll1on people are affected by diabetes • 15% of worldwide health spending goes toward treating diabetes. • 450,000 people now wear transportable insulin pumps worldwide. sources Debiotech ·:,•ebs1te Advanced Packaging Figure 6. An Insulin MEMS Pump. An implantable drug-delivery device. Diabetes is a disorder in which glucose (blood sugar) is not properly taken into the cells of the body. This process is normally mediated by the hormone insulin, which is produced by the islet cells of the pancreas. Insulin circulates in the blood to actuate a receptor on tissue cells that causes them to uptake glucose from the blood stream. If there is too little insulin (as in Type 1 diabetes) the cells will not uptake glucose from the blood, the cells will starve, and blood sugar levels become too high from unabsorbed glucose. Alternatively, cells may not respond properly to normal insulin levels (as in Type 2 diabetes) and require artificially higher levels of insulin to uptake glucose. This is called insulin resistance. In either case, blood insulin levels can be increased by using insulin injection devices. Brittle diabetes is a condition where blood glucose levels fluctuate wildly with eating or fasting causing hyperglycemia (too high a blood glucose-more than about 100 mg percent) or too low (hypoglycemia-less than about 60 mg percent). Brittle diabetics 8 UNCLASSIFIED/ /f8Pl err1e1111t "32 OICL I
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 45 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.