BioE graduate students are finalists for CIMIT Healthcare Prize

Two graduate students in the Department of Bioengineering—Guillermo L. Monroy and Eric Salm—and their teams were recently named finalists for the CIMIT Prize for Technology in Primary Healthcare.

Monroy and his team are developing a new type of Otoscope and Ophthalmoscope that incorporate Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) imaging techniques to allow doctors treat infections and illnesses more effectively.

Otoscopes and Ophthalmoscopes are used by most primary care doctors in the world and help give them a look into the ears and eyes of their patients. While traditional imagining techniques give doctors a good idea of what may be wrong, Monroy hopes that his team’s work can help more effectively to detect possible diseases early on and then provide quantitative monitoring of a disease during it’s progression or recession.

The design of the modified instrument is such that Monroy doesn’t believe that doctors will have to be “convinced to try our new product, as it functions exactly as the old one, but provides more information to help them give a better diagnosis.” Ultimately, Monroy hopes that primary care physicians will embrace the technology and use it to help more people.

“We want to be able to diagnose potential diseases as soon as they manifest to subsequently treat them as soon as possible,” Monroy said. “This capability will be enhanced with our work, as our devices will give doctors and staff at primary care offices more quantitative information to better diagnose and treat disease, or refer the patients elsewhere to receive the proper care.”

Salm’s project involves “Lab-on-a-Transistor” technology. The basic premise is to take “Lab-on-a-Chip” technology one step smaller and begin to use individual transistors for basic laboratory functions. Salm's goal is to use a unique technique for heating a sub-nanoliter droplet on the transistor in order to drive polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a common biological practice which amplifies DNA from a specific target.

Current PCR detection methods utilize a fluorescent dye that binds to DNA.  As the DNA is amplified, the fluorescent signal increases.  However, this sort of optical setup is relatively expensive and is limited to a laboratory setting. By utilizing electrical detection on a the transistor biosensor coupled with the nano-droplet heating technique, Salm hopes he can extend the use of PCR assays from the laboratory to the home.

What is particularly exciting about the research is that PCR has a huge range of applications: “If we get this to work in one setting, we can get this to work in all kinds of settings,” Salm said. He added it could be applied to everything from food safety to homeland defense to helping identify cancer-related biomarkers.

The award is given out annually and aims to help engineering students “seek ideas as for technologic innovation with the potential to support and catalyze improved delivery of healthcare at the frontlines of medicine,” according to the award’s website. The winner of the award will be announced July 2 and will receive $150,000, while the second and third place finishers will earn $100,000 and $50,000 respectively.
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Contact: Wendy Evans, Department of Bioengineering, 217/333-1867.

Writer:  Gregory Zeck, Engineering Communications Office.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.