[Applause]
the last time that I got sick the total
time that I spent traveling to the
hospital filling out paperwork and
sitting in the waiting room was
significantly longer than the one-on-one
time I ended up having with a doctor to
diagnose me and give me a prescription
for antibiotics now the irony is I had
spent the three previous days completely
miserable getting sicker and sicker
hoping my cold would magically go away
just trying to avoid that doctor’s visit
in 1966 a medical device was created
that would have allowed me to diagnose
myself on day one as soon as I started
feeling bad this singular piece of
technology had the ability to transform
medical system unfortunately it stopped
being used when they cancelled it on
Star Trek
remember the tricorder device that dr.
McCoy used to use he would simply scan
you and tell you everything that’s going
on with you at that moment now almost 70
years later this is a little more
science than it is fiction and at Sandia
National Laboratories we are working to
make a version of this device consider
three attributes of the tricorder that
we would like to reproduce the first is
that it is small and it’s portable no
need for a testing lab you carry the
testing lab around with you computers
used to be the size of rooms now we
carry them around in our hand why not
laboratory equipment there’s a whole
field collab on the chip technologies
that allows us to miniaturize medical
devices the second attribute instant
readout and can tell you many things
that are going on with you at that
moment
now the third attribute which is by far
the most difficult challenge for us to
reproduce is that the tricorder was
non-invasive it didn’t even have to
touch you so remember this I’m going to
bring this up in a second but first let
me put two more characteristics that the
tricorder didn’t have we would like to
attempt to do let’s remove dr. McCoy
from the equation let’s make the
tricorder a wearable device that is
continuously monitoring and let’s give
it a little extra neck read out so you
can transmit the results okay let’s go
back to the most difficult challenge to
make it non invasive the first
generation of wearables have just come
out and they are non-invasive but they
are limited to mainly
electrophysiological measurements they
can measure your heart rate your blood
flow maybe even then the steps you take
that’s great information but one of the
gold standards for clinical diagnosis is
to measure circulating molecules in your
blood so we want to make a wearable
continuous device that measures as many
of these same blood markers as possible
kind of think about it like it’s a
fitbit on steroids
we do this with a technology called
micro needles now just as it sounds
they’re just very very small needles
here’s an example of micro needles that
we make in our laboratory they’re made
out of metal
they’re pyramidal in shape hollow with
an offset bore to draw in biological
fluids to give you an example of their
size here’s a penny right here when I
turn it on its side it is 1.5
millimeters tall these micro needles are
0.75 millimeters you would need to stack
two of these micro needles on top of
each other to be as tall as this penny
right now compare that to a traditional
hypodermic needle which penetrates deep
in the muscle and is very painful micro
needles barely pierce the stratum
corneum the outermost layer of the skin
they’re so small they don’t reach nerve
endings you don’t feel a thing
micro needles were originally developed
for drug delivery purposes and they’ve
proven to be very effective in the
painless delivery of vaccines and drugs
we want to go the opposite way we want
to use them to sample biological fluids
but they don’t reach blood capillaries
like hypodermic needles so we don’t
sample blood we sample interstitial
fluid this is the fluid between cells in
your skin so let’s think how would a
device like this affect your lives
first of all it
just makes it more convenient if you can
show up to the doctor with your results
or even better measure yourself at home
and send the results to the doctor it
saves time and it’s saved money but it’s
more than that
continuous health monitoring is
invaluable here’s a profile from an
implantable blood glucose meter that
measures you over the course of 24 hours
the solid line you see it jumps up all
day long goes up and it goes down those
red dots are the results from my finger
prick test where you might test yourself
four or five times a day you can measure
yourself and seem healthy with
intermittent monitoring and miss all
these highs and lows if we can make a
medical diagnostic device that is so
simple you measure yourself when you are
healthy
it makes diagnosis more accurate and
makes it faster and you can even
diagnose yourself before you feel
symptoms of getting sick I started
working in the field of micro needle
sensors back in 2010 at Sandia with my
colleague Phillip Miller and we use a
technique called electrochemistry where
we try to use chemical reactions to
convert the presence of molecules into
electrical signals so we have made micro
needle sensors to detect glucose so a
diabetic can measure his blood glucose
at home lactate in a port in metabolic
marker and even skin pH now taken
together all these markers are good
indicator of your health but but
measured simultaneously they are fatigue
markers so there’s something an athlete
might use to optimize his performance
the Department of Defense wants us to
use these two to measure the performance
of soldiers on the battlefield so we
have started making devices to measure
multiple markers simultaneously on these
micro needles here’s an example of a
device we have made it’s a micro needle
fluidic chip with micro needle arrays
sensors integrated and we use this to
detect a protein called troponin which
is a cardiac marker that is released in
you have a heart attack so it’s
something a person with a previous
history at home can solve a patch on and
see if they’re having another event or
just stressed out
we have also made a microneedle device
to detect electrolytes such as potassium
when we published this article it was
featured on the cover of the journal
that month and very soon after Game one
of the NBA Finals LeBron James got a
muscle cramp and had to leave the game
we actually got calls the people said
hey we read about your electrolytes at
Sur earlier we thought it was cool and
now we think him might be really
valuable we were on the evening news
they said could your device have helped
the Bron James stay in the game so we
said well yeah it’s the point if you can
be measuring your electrolyte levels you
see a negative trend tell him to drink
Gatorade or
maybe even have other micro needles
inject a countermeasure then we tried to
make the point that it can be helped
non-famous people – I didn’t complain
because you can’t buy that kind of
publicity currently we are doing
clinical studies on these at the
University of New Mexico Medical School
with dr. Justin Baca an emergency
medicine specialist one of the things we
discovered is how to put the micro
needles in and extract fluid out of the
skin that’s the clear fluid you see in
that glass capillary completely
colorless no red blood cells pure dermal
interstitial fluid now today in health
monitoring you sample biological fluids
it’s primarily blood urine saliva even
sweat nobody measures skin fluid or
right now but the skin is not just a
protective barrier to the outside world
your skin is an organ it’s has its own
unique immune cells called Langerhans
cells in fact the skin is the largest
organ in the human body so we’ve been
taking this fluid out and analyzing what
is inside and one of the most
interesting things is we found that this
fluid is full of EXO zones those are
these spheres you see here and these
electron microscope pictures now
exercise were discovered in the 80s and
there’s still a little bit of a mystery
they form inside of cells and they
capture biological molecules like
proteins genetic material like RNA and
then the cell will spit it out so they
were originally thought to be like
nothing more than garbage trucks where
the cell would be wanting to get rid of
I’m watching all
kills then they started to notice that
these X’s on would travel through the
body and another cell will take them in
the cells are talking to each other this
is how cells communicate in the car go
inside of these X’s ohms have messages
in instructions both good and bad an
immune cell can release an X’s ohm that
tells another cell were being attacked
activate your self defense mechanisms
and on the flip side a cancer cell will
release an X’s ohm that causes another
cell to become cancerous so we want to
use these micro needles to extract the
fluid intercept these EXO’s ohms look at
the proteins look at the RNAs inside
read the messages can we understand how
does the body defend itself
how does cancer spread can we make an
early cancer detector can we make drugs
that target these EXO’s ohms instead of
the cancer to stop it from spreading
so coming full circle we are still
trying to make continuously monitoring
micro needle sensor by this time next
year we hope to have a sensor that
measures lactate on a person exercising
but now we also think we have a research
platform to look at how the body cancer
spreads can we make new drugs to fight
cancer can we use interstitial fluid as
a novel method to do clinical diagnosis
it’s a fun project I get to work with
great people and thank you for listening
[Applause]
the last time that I got sick the total
time that I spent traveling to the
hospital filling out paperwork and
sitting in the waiting room was
significantly longer than the one-on-one
time I ended up having with a doctor to
diagnose me and give me a prescription
for antibiotics now the irony is I had
spent the three previous days completely
miserable getting sicker and sicker
hoping my cold would magically go away
just trying to avoid that doctor’s visit
in 1966 a medical device was created
that would have allowed me to diagnose
myself on day one as soon as I started
feeling bad this singular piece of
technology had the ability to transform
medical system unfortunately it stopped
being used when they cancelled it on
Star Trek
remember the tricorder device that dr.
McCoy used to use he would simply scan
you and tell you everything that’s going
on with you at that moment now almost 70
years later this is a little more
science than it is fiction and at Sandia
National Laboratories we are working to
make a version of this device consider
three attributes of the tricorder that
we would like to reproduce the first is
that it is small and it’s portable no
need for a testing lab you carry the
testing lab around with you computers
used to be the size of rooms now we
carry them around in our hand why not
laboratory equipment there’s a whole
field collab on the chip technologies
that allows us to miniaturize medical
devices the second attribute instant
readout and can tell you many things
that are going on with you at that
moment
now the third attribute which is by far
the most difficult challenge for us to
reproduce is that the tricorder was
non-invasive it didn’t even have to
touch you so remember this I’m going to
bring this up in a second but first let
me put two more characteristics that the
tricorder didn’t have we would like to
attempt to do let’s remove dr. McCoy
from the equation let’s make the
tricorder a wearable device that is
continuously monitoring and let’s give
it a little extra neck read out so you
can transmit the results okay let’s go
back to the most difficult challenge to
make it non invasive the first
generation of wearables have just come
out and they are non-invasive but they
are limited to mainly
electrophysiological measurements they
can measure your heart rate your blood
flow maybe even then the steps you take
that’s great information but one of the
gold standards for clinical diagnosis is
to measure circulating molecules in your
blood so we want to make a wearable
continuous device that measures as many
of these same blood markers as possible
kind of think about it like it’s a
fitbit on steroids
we do this with a technology called
micro needles now just as it sounds
they’re just very very small needles
here’s an example of micro needles that
we make in our laboratory they’re made
out of metal
they’re pyramidal in shape hollow with
an offset bore to draw in biological
fluids to give you an example of their
size here’s a penny right here when I
turn it on its side it is 1.5
millimeters tall these micro needles are
0.75 millimeters you would need to stack
two of these micro needles on top of
each other to be as tall as this penny
right now compare that to a traditional
hypodermic needle which penetrates deep
in the muscle and is very painful micro
needles barely pierce the stratum
corneum the outermost layer of the skin
they’re so small they don’t reach nerve
endings you don’t feel a thing
micro needles were originally developed
for drug delivery purposes and they’ve
proven to be very effective in the
painless delivery of vaccines and drugs
we want to go the opposite way we want
to use them to sample biological fluids
but they don’t reach blood capillaries
like hypodermic needles so we don’t
sample blood we sample interstitial
fluid this is the fluid between cells in
your skin so let’s think how would a
device like this affect your lives
first of all it
just makes it more convenient if you can
show up to the doctor with your results
or even better measure yourself at home
and send the results to the doctor it
saves time and it’s saved money but it’s
more than that
continuous health monitoring is
invaluable here’s a profile from an
implantable blood glucose meter that
measures you over the course of 24 hours
the solid line you see it jumps up all
day long goes up and it goes down those
red dots are the results from my finger
prick test where you might test yourself
four or five times a day you can measure
yourself and seem healthy with
intermittent monitoring and miss all
these highs and lows if we can make a
medical diagnostic device that is so
simple you measure yourself when you are
healthy
it makes diagnosis more accurate and
makes it faster and you can even
diagnose yourself before you feel
symptoms of getting sick I started
working in the field of micro needle
sensors back in 2010 at Sandia with my
colleague Phillip Miller and we use a
technique called electrochemistry where
we try to use chemical reactions to
convert the presence of molecules into
electrical signals so we have made micro
needle sensors to detect glucose so a
diabetic can measure his blood glucose
at home lactate in a port in metabolic
marker and even skin pH now taken
together all these markers are good
indicator of your health but but
measured simultaneously they are fatigue
markers so there’s something an athlete
might use to optimize his performance
the Department of Defense wants us to
use these two to measure the performance
of soldiers on the battlefield so we
have started making devices to measure
multiple markers simultaneously on these
micro needles here’s an example of a
device we have made it’s a micro needle
fluidic chip with micro needle arrays
sensors integrated and we use this to
detect a protein called troponin which
is a cardiac marker that is released in
you have a heart attack so it’s
something a person with a previous
history at home can solve a patch on and
see if they’re having another event or
just stressed out
we have also made a microneedle device
to detect electrolytes such as potassium
when we published this article it was
featured on the cover of the journal
that month and very soon after Game one
of the NBA Finals LeBron James got a
muscle cramp and had to leave the game
we actually got calls the people said
hey we read about your electrolytes at
Sur earlier we thought it was cool and
now we think him might be really
valuable we were on the evening news
they said could your device have helped
the Bron James stay in the game so we
said well yeah it’s the point if you can
be measuring your electrolyte levels you
see a negative trend tell him to drink
Gatorade or
maybe even have other micro needles
inject a countermeasure then we tried to
make the point that it can be helped
non-famous people – I didn’t complain
because you can’t buy that kind of
publicity currently we are doing
clinical studies on these at the
University of New Mexico Medical School
with dr. Justin Baca an emergency
medicine specialist one of the things we
discovered is how to put the micro
needles in and extract fluid out of the
skin that’s the clear fluid you see in
that glass capillary completely
colorless no red blood cells pure dermal
interstitial fluid now today in health
monitoring you sample biological fluids
it’s primarily blood urine saliva even
sweat nobody measures skin fluid or
right now but the skin is not just a
protective barrier to the outside world
your skin is an organ it’s has its own
unique immune cells called Langerhans
cells in fact the skin is the largest
organ in the human body so we’ve been
taking this fluid out and analyzing what
is inside and one of the most
interesting things is we found that this
fluid is full of EXO zones those are
these spheres you see here and these
electron microscope pictures now
exercise were discovered in the 80s and
there’s still a little bit of a mystery
they form inside of cells and they
capture biological molecules like
proteins genetic material like RNA and
then the cell will spit it out so they
were originally thought to be like
nothing more than garbage trucks where
the cell would be wanting to get rid of
I’m watching all
kills then they started to notice that
these X’s on would travel through the
body and another cell will take them in
the cells are talking to each other this
is how cells communicate in the car go
inside of these X’s ohms have messages
in instructions both good and bad an
immune cell can release an X’s ohm that
tells another cell were being attacked
activate your self defense mechanisms
and on the flip side a cancer cell will
release an X’s ohm that causes another
cell to become cancerous so we want to
use these micro needles to extract the
fluid intercept these EXO’s ohms look at
the proteins look at the RNAs inside
read the messages can we understand how
does the body defend itself
how does cancer spread can we make an
early cancer detector can we make drugs
that target these EXO’s ohms instead of
the cancer to stop it from spreading
so coming full circle we are still
trying to make continuously monitoring
micro needle sensor by this time next
year we hope to have a sensor that
measures lactate on a person exercising
but now we also think we have a research
platform to look at how the body cancer
spreads can we make new drugs to fight
cancer can we use interstitial fluid as
a novel method to do clinical diagnosis
it’s a fun project I get to work with
great people and thank you for listening
[Applause]
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