R & D Programmes
Biomedical Devices
Amongst the major health challenges facing us today are the prevention and treatment of heart disease, the management of neurodegenerative diseases and finding new technologies to support human imaging and biomarker discovery.
The Centre of Applied Science for Health Biomedical Device research programme involves expertise spanning chemistry, clinical science and engineering, providing the impetus for the partnership and collaborative projects outlined. Working together with clinicians, translation of new knowledge and technologies into the medical arena will be possible. To date, research into medical devices and products has been hampered by the low involvement of medical doctors and hospitals in research. This collaboration between scientists, engineers and clinicians from ITT Dublin, NUIM, DCU and AMNCH seeks to address this gap.
The project area is divided into two key sections, namely:
Programme in Microsensing and Modelling tools for Clinical Diagnostics
This research programme examines new generic designs and approaches to thin-film microsensor design and fabrication, with integrated on-chip microfluidics.
Based on well-developed expertise in bioreagent immobilisation at ITT Dublin, ex-vivo point-of-care tests for chosen urgent care cardiac markers of hypertension are being developed with clinical collaboration. Other sensors for clinical diagnosis and therapeutic procedures in the Gastrointestinal Tract (GIT) are based on physical dynamic models which replicate the behaviour of the human GIT as a tool for the clinical placement of probes and the effects of therapeutic procedures. Development of mobile software applications for patient data analysis and presentation will be applied to projects in the GIT area and to signals arising from the ex vivo microsensor systems.
Programme to Evaluate Neurological Oxidative Stress
Amperometric electrodes and in vivo voltammetric techniques enable investigation of the functions and roles of specific neurochemicals and reactive oxygen species, in neuronal signalling with high time resolution. Modified electrodes capable of measuring hydrogen peroxide, dihydroxyaromatics and glutamate are being targeted to provide in vivo biomarkers of oxidative stress. Following laboratory development, these devices will be tested in vivo using disease state animal models (using facilities at NUI Maynooth) enabling pre-clinical testing, with a view to translation to humans.
