Fighting TB As Easy As 1-2-3
[ubermenu config_id=โmainโ menu=โ84โณ] NEWSROOM Fighting TB As Easy As 1-2-3May 11, 2009 Itโs one of the worldโs most intractable medical problems, spreading at the alarming rate of one new infection every four seconds. The disease is tuberculosis, and โฆ
May 11, 2009 NC State ECE
NEWSROOM
Fighting TB As Easy As 1-2-3
Itโs one of the worldโs most intractable medical problems, spreading at the alarming rate of one new infection every four seconds. The disease is tuberculosis, and it has now infected up to one-third of the people on Earth, primarily in the developing world, where diagnostic and treatment tools are scarce. And itโs an effective killer, claiming 1.7 million victims every year.
But those numbers may change, thanks to the pioneering work of three NC State undergraduates, who have developed the first practical diagnostic device for TB that is cheap, fast and accurate.
The device the students created can diagnose tuberculosis with the push of a button. The data can be sent directly to a laptop.
โHereโs the simple explanation,โ says Daniel Jeck, a biomedical engineering student. โYou take a patientโs saliva and put it on a slide. Then you place the slide in our device. If it glows green, then the patient has an active case of TB. Diagnosing tuberculosis is now as easy as counting glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.โ
It seems simple now, but it was a real challenge โ and one that had stumped professional medical device developers for years. But Jeck wasnโt alone on the project. He teamed up with two other students in the universityโs rigorous Engineering Entrepreneurs Program: fellow biomedical engineering major Pavak Shah, and Hersh Tapadia, an electrical and computer engineering major.
โOur instructor told us that the most successful teams are multidisciplinary,โ Shah says. โThatโs true. We argued a lot, but we couldnโt have done it alone.โ
What theyโve done has the potential to save thousands of lives and millions of dollars in the developing world, where up to 40 percent of all active TB cases are missed by clinics and hospitals using traditional diagnostic tools.
โIn India they require three tests,โ says Tapadia. โSo by the time you get the test results, the disease has progressed and even spread to other people.โ
Shah, whose parents were born in India, often visits relatives on the sub-continent. He says the medical infrastructure in the developing world isnโt equipped to stop the spread of tuberculosis.
โFor active TB, the way most of world diagnoses it is to collect sputum, smear it on a slide thatโs treated with a stain, and then look at the slide at 1,000 times magnification. That requires a trained microscopist, which is very expensive.โ
Daniel Jeck says diagnosing TB is now โas easy as counting glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.โ
Itโs also slow and tedious. At 1,000 times magnification, a microscopist can scan just a small section of each slide. The NC State students estimate you could scan 45 times more area of each slide in less than one minute using their device.
And they really do mean โyou.โ The device can be used by anyone who can use a computer, not just a trained microscopist.
The groundbreaking device is just the latest technological marvel to emerge from NC State, where university officials launched a campuswide entrepreneurship initiative last year to expand on the success of the engineering program. NC State holds 641 active patents and has another 141 pending. Itโs spun off 72 start-up companies based on technology developed by university researchers.
Programs like the Engineering Entrepreneurship Program are transforming studentsโ classroom experiences, confronting them with real-world problems and training them to think like the worldโs most successful entrepreneurs. Shah heard about the program from a neighbor who graduated from NC State in 2007.
โHe told me itโs an amazing program that would let me take my project to an amazing place,โ he says.
He wasnโt kidding. The project began to take shape last fall after the students met with their project adviser, Dr. Howard Shapiro, a Boston physician who designs instruments that count and sort cells.
After he reviewed the studentโs initial plans for the TB diagnostic device, Shapiro advised them to take a non-traditional approach.
โHe told us that philosophically the way we were approaching the project โ the traditional approach โ was wrong,โ Shah says. โHe said we were trying to take an expensive box built for Europe and America, take out a few pieces and send to the Third World. He said we needed to start with a new, empty box.โ
Hersh Tapadia says the purpose of the innovation isnโt to make money, but to save lives.
Shapiro suggested that the team build off of an instrument design he had done some initial work on, showing it was possible to detect TB bacteria with very simple hardware.
That was the turning point in the project.
โWe decided that we had to create something so that you could push a button and read the test results,โ Tapadia says. โIt had to be that simple.โ
They built the device using off-the-shelf components and a laptop computer. The device could be mass-produced for under $500 each, they estimate.
Since the innovation hit the front page of Raleighโs News & Observer, the students have been overwhelmed with calls and e-mails, including an offer by Dr. Jason Stout, the North Carolina director of tuberculosis control, to conduct the first round of clinical trials for the device.
Itโs unclear whether the development will make them rich; the students are still investigating several options, including working with a medical device manufacturer to make the technology available in the developing world.
โInternational patents are very hard to enforce,โ Tapadia notes. โBut if we put aside the issue of money, then perhaps we could partner with a nonprofit. And, anyway, the point isnโt making money. The point is saving lives.โ
Article by David Hunt, NC State Bulletin
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