Currently, the hundreds of millions of people worldwide manage their diabetes by constantly monitoring their blood glucose levels using some kind of monitor and injecting themselves with insulin. This method is immensely inconvenient can often be painful. Luckily, biochemical engineers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed an alternative: the smart micro-needle array patch. The surface of the patch is covered in microneedles loaded with insulin-containing nanoparticles that can detect and be released into capillaries within the skin when glucose levels are too high.
When the patch was tested on mice with Type I diabetes, it was able to keep glucose concentrations within a healthy range for a few hours. Unfortunately, the patch is unable to to sense the very small changes that pancreatic beta cells very closely monitor. Part of this problem is due to the fact that the patch does not receive other signals, such as those that suggest a meal may be coming, as beta cells do. The team plans to move their testing to pigs, whose skin and size is more representative of that of humans. If this technology could be designed to be more sensitive to small changes in glucose concentration, the patch may offer a much more convenient way of diabetes management.
Read more about the microarray patch here:
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43355/title/Next-Generation--Smart-Insulin-Patch/
and here:
http://www.pnas.org.dml.regis.edu/content/112/27/8260.full#abstract-2
This was an interesting study to read about. I was looking on another article, and it was amazing how this patch can adjust blood glucose levels to within a desired range, all by changing the enzyme dosage within each microneedle. Another interesting statement was that these smart insulin patches do not have as much risk as insulin injections do. At times, due to the frequency of the injections, a person's blood sugar may be sent shooting downward or shooting upward. Whenever this patch is available to people, it will hopefully bring relief to the millions of people that are currently having to inject themselves with insulin multiple times a day, every day of the year. Definitely an innovation to keep an eye out for and a great topic to discuss.
ReplyDeleteLink: https://news.ncsu.edu/2015/06/gu-smart-patch-2015/
As someone with Type I diabetes, I cannot tell you how ecstatic I would be if a patch was created so I didn’t have to poke myself so much! I am on an insulin pump which delivers insulin via small tubing that is inserted into cutaneous tissue. Every 2-3 days I have to change out this site, and while this decreases the number of individual injections compared to using syringes, the needle is bigger and can be rather painful if you hit the wrong spot. For the continuous glucose monitor portion, I have a small sensor that is connected to a flexible wire that also inserted into my abdomen that gets reinserted every week- with an even bigger needle. Aside from the pain factor, scar tissue accumulation and infection from so many injections can be a cause of concern for diabetics.
ReplyDeleteI also found their use of enzymes discussed in the article very novel. There can be a significant delay in the time it takes a diabetic realizes their blood sugar is high, injects the correcting amount of insulin, and when the insulin finally kicks in. If some of this insulin was already in the blood stream from the patch, and the glucose levels activate the insulin inhibiting enzyme coating to fall off, the time delay could be substantially decreased.
They mention the complication of the patch not being able to anticipate minute blood glucose changes, but if they were to couple this patch technology with continuous glucose monitors (which track trends in BG levels), these researchers could really be on to something that would improve the quality of life for a lot of diabetics. My fingers are crossed for their pig trials to be successful!