Implanted Chips That Deliver Your Drugs
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Bob Langer has spent 25 years trying to solve the puzzle of drug delivery. Every drug has a desirable therapeutic range. Above it, the drug can be toxic. Below, the medication can be ineffective. Just how do you get the right dose to a patient at the right time? To find the answer, Langer has customized polymers that allow drugs to seep out into the body, experimented with magnets as a way to control polymer drug release, and worked on patches that slowly pass drugs into the body through the skin. To date, Langer holds 408 patents and has published 711 articles and 13 books. He has also licensed products to more than 75 companies. So when Langer has an idea, it matters. His latest brainchild combines silicon chips with advanced medical-device technology to make drug delivery more intelligent. “This is a paradigm shift,” he says. “We’re putting pharmacies on a chip.” It could also turn out to be big business. The U.S. drug delivery industry produces $38 billion to $40 billion in revenues each year. Mahesh Chaubal, founder of drug-delivery information service Drugdel.com, estimates that the market for computerized delivery systems could be worth $5 billion by 2012, vs. zero today. DRUG WELLS. The concept of a computerized drug-delivery system came to Langer while he was watching a TV program about chip-giant Intel more than 10 years ago. But it wasn’t until John Santini arrived as an MIT summer student in 1993 that the project started to take shape. After completing his PhD at MIT, Santini founded MicroCHIPS, a Cambridge (Mass.) startup that’s designing chip-based drug-delivery technology. To date, it has attracted two rounds of venture funding totaling $17.25 million. More : businessweek.com |