Current Project Information
Client Information: Our client is UN&UP (https://www.unandup.com/) with our main point of contact being Michael Sabo (mes@unandup.com).
Need Statement: A way to shorten the time frostbite goes untreated and the time to localized drug delivery to improve patient outcomes and increase limb retention and function.
Project Scope: Physicians need a method to quickly and accurately deliver frostbite therapeutics to affected extremities where blood often coagulates. This timelier and more targeted therapeutic intervention will improve patient outcomes allowing them to attain extremities and relevant function for a higher quality of life. The therapeutic localization device will be accessible to all extremities impacted by frostbite, and the therapeutic agent will reach affected areas within 1 minute of device activation. Additionally, to test the validity of this localization a realistic phantom reflecting the dynamics of extremity vasculature will be fabricated. We will deliver a programmable control system for a magnet (therapeutic device) and a realistic phantom to our client UN&UP by April 25, 2025, as well as all proper documentation for fabricating the therapeutic device and phantom.
Recent Activities
We presented our Preliminary Presentation to a group of our peers and instructors.
We are scheduling a meeting with Jennifer Dow MD – Medical Director for the National Park Service – Alaska Region and Emergency Medicine Physician at Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage for early October.
We scheduled a meeting for Thursday October 10th with Edwin Carlen a WashU faculty member and expert on microfabrication technology and nanotechnology, who we are consulting in regards to the phantom requested by our client UN&UP to model extremity vasculature. We have also found some additional contacts for microfluidics and vasculature modeling in Mark Mc Veigh a graduate student in the Bellan Lab for Advanced Materials at Vanderbilt University who is developing a microfluidic platform to inexpensively synthesize radiotracers used in positron emission tomography (PET).
Future Steps
We are looking through internal works and reports that UN&UP possesses on the motion of magnetic nanoparticles in controlled environments, the peak velocities and forces put upon these particles, and the optimal distances from the magnet and particle which could impact our design specifications.
We are also beginning to conceptualize the various aspects of Frostbite pathology and its impacts on extremity vasculature that will need to be represented in a phantom and how this will impact the ability of the phantom to show relevant drug delivery.
Questions/Things to Look Into
What are common tradeoffs of phantoms used in the medical setting?
How is vasculature modeled across different distance and time scales (particularly that of microvasculature)?