Tag: GRASP Lab

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Nanorobotic Systems Presents New Options for Targeting Fungal Infections

by Nathi Magubane

Candida albicans is a species of yeast that is a normal part of the human microbiota but can also cause severe infections that pose a significant global health risk due to their resistance to existing treatments, so much so that the World Health Organization has highlighted this as a priority issue. The picture above shows a before (left) and after (right) fluorescence image of fungal biofilms being precisely targeted by nanozyme microrobots without bonding to or disturbing the tissue sample. (Image: Min Jun Oh and Seokyoung Yoon)

Infections caused by fungi, such as Candida albicans, pose a significant global health risk due to their resistance to existing treatments, so much so that the World Health Organization has highlighted this as a priority issue.

Although nanomaterials show promise as antifungal agents, current iterations lack the potency and specificity needed for quick and targeted treatment, leading to prolonged treatment times and potential off-target effects and drug resistance.

Now, in a groundbreaking development with far-reaching implications for global health, a team of researchers jointly led by Hyun (Michel) Koo of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine and Edward Steager of Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science has created a microrobotic system capable of rapid, targeted elimination of fungal pathogens.

“Candida forms tenacious biofilm infections that are particularly hard to treat,” Koo says. “Current antifungal therapies lack the potency and specificity required to quickly and effectively eliminate these pathogens, so this collaboration draws from our clinical knowledge and combines Ed’s team and their robotic expertise to offer a new approach.”

The team of researchers is a part of Penn Dental’s Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry, an initiative that leverages engineering and computational approaches to uncover new knowledge for disease mitigation and advance oral and craniofacial health care innovation.

For this paper, published in Advanced Materials, the researchers capitalized on recent advancements in catalytic nanoparticles, known as nanozymes, and they built miniature robotic systems that could accurately target and quickly destroy fungal cells. They achieved this by using electromagnetic fields to control the shape and movements of these nanozyme microrobots with great precision.

“The methods we use to control the nanoparticles in this study are magnetic, which allows us to direct them to the exact infection location,” Steager says. “We use iron oxide nanoparticles, which have another important property, namely that they’re catalytic.”

Read the full story in Penn Today.

Hyun (Michel) Koo is a professor in the Department of Orthodontics and in the divisions of Pediatric Dentistry and Community Oral Health and is the co-founder of the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry in the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Penn Bioengineering Graduate Group.

Edward Steager is a research investigator in the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception Laboratory at Penn.

Other authors include Min Jun Oh, Alaa Babeer, Yuan Liu, Zhi Ren, Zhenting Xiang, Yilan Miao, and Chider Chen of Penn Dental; and David P. Cormode and Seokyoung Yoon of the Perelman School of Medicine. Cormode also holds a secondary appointment in Bioengineering.

This research was supported in part by the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research (R01 DE025848, R56 DE029985, R90DE031532 and; the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea of the Ministry of Education (NRF-2021R1A6A3A03044553).

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A Robot Made of Sticks

Kristina García

Devin Carroll, a doctoral candidate in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is designing a modular robot called StickBot, which may be adapted for rehabilitation use in global public health settings.

Stickbot, a small robot composed of sticks, circuitry, actuators, a microcontroller, and a motor driver, lashed together with string.
StickBot in walking mode, using the sticks as legs to propel itself across the table.

In late summer, just as the leaves were starting to crisp and curl in the heat, Devin Carroll walked out of his apartment, looked on the ground, and picked up a couple of sticks that he thought might work for his robot. About half an inch thick and the length of an adult hand, he stripped the three sticks of their bark and lashed them with string to StickBot, a modular robot composed of circuitry, actuators, a microcontroller, and a motor driver.

Powered by four AA batteries, connected by a maze of wires and blinking lights, StickBot’s wooden arms now thump up and over, powering the robot across the table at Penn’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) Lab, where Carroll is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Controlling the robot using an app he designed, Carroll shows how StickBot can pivot from using the sticks as legs in “crawler mode,” to using them as arms. In “grasper mode,” the sticks are attached to a controller plate on one side to form a hinge joint while moving with their free end to hold a cup upright.

Rather than a static, singular invention, StickBot is an idea, a flexible system that can be reconfigured in a variety of ways. A modular robot, StickBot’s components can be added, adjusted, and discarded as needed.

Read the full story in Penn Engineering Today.

This article features quotes from Michelle Johnson, Associate Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in the Perelman School of Medicine and in Bioengineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Director of the Rehabilitation Robotics Lab.

 

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An Ecosystem of Innovation Fosters Tech-based Solutions to COVID-19 Challenges

by Erica K. Brockmeier

GRASP lab researchers (from left) Bernd Pfrommer, Kenneth Chaney, and Caio Mucchiani assembling telemedicine cart prototypes in Levine hall earlier this spring. (Image courtesy of Kenneth Chaney and Bernd Pfrommer)

Since the start of the spring, members of the Penn community have been working to combat coronavirus and its many impacts. Some people are studying COVID-19 or developing vaccines, while others are 3D-printing face shields for health care workers and delivering fall courses online.

And while innovation in health care usually brings to mind new treatments and medicines, the efforts of clinicians, engineers, and IT specialists demonstrate the importance technological infrastructure for rapidly deployable, tech-based solutions so clinicians can provide the best care to patients amid social distancing and coronavirus restrictions.

The telemedicine revolution

In late March, telemedicine was key for allowing Penn Medicine clinicians to deliver care while avoiding potentially risky in-person interactions. Chief Medical Information Officer C. William Hanson III and his team helped set up the IT infrastructure for scaling up telemedicine capabilities and provided guidance to clinicians. Thanks to the quick pivot, Penn Medicine went from 300 telemedicine visits in February to more than 7,500 visits per day in a matter of weeks.

But far from seeing telemedicine as a temporary solution during the pandemic, Hanson has been a long-time advocate for this approach to health care. In his role as liaison between clinicians and the IT community in the past 10 years Hanson, helped establish remote ICU monitoring protocols and broadened opportunities for televisits with specialists. Now, with the pandemic removing many of the previous barriers to entry, be they technical, insurance-based, or simply a lack of familiarity, Hanson believes that telemedicine is here to stay.

“As the pandemic evolved, people were aware that telemedicine could help the health care system, as well as doctors and patients, during this crisis,” he says. “Now, there are definitely places where telemedicine makes good sense, and we will continue to use that as part of our way of handling a problem.” Other benefits include removing geographic barriers to entry for new patients, reduced appointment times, increased patient satisfaction, and reduced health care provider burnout.

Simple solutions for COVID-19 challenges

As the director of Penn’s Telestroke Program, neurologist Michael Mullen has experience diagnosing from a distance. This spring, telemedicine carts his group uses were repurposed in COVID ICUs. At the same time, Mullen and group wanted to expand their ability to assess stroke patients remotely, so he reached out to Brian Litt, faculty director of Penn Health-Tech, to see how he could collaborate to create an analogous telemedicine station using readily available, cost-effective components.

Rapid and simple solutions are at the heart of Penn’s ModLab, a subgroup of the GRASP lab focused on robots made of configurable individual components. As part of a COVID-19 rapid response initiative, engineers worked with Mullen to figure out a viable solution in record time. “The idea was to make it as simple and as fast as possible,” says graduate student Caio Mucchiani. “With robotics, usually you want to make things more sophisticated, however, given the situation, we needed to know how we could use off-the-shelf components to make something.”

Fellow graduate student Ken Chaney, postdoc Bernd Pfrommer, and Mucchiani came up with a plan that replicated the required specs of the existing telemedicine carts, including state-of-the-art cameras for detailed imaging as well as a reliable, easily rechargeable battery. The team then put together 10 telemedicine carts, assembling the prototypes with social distancing and masks at the GRASP lab in early April.

While changes to treatment approaches mean that these carts still require additional field testing, Mullen is still eager to expand the program, be it for diagnosing patients safely or educating medical students in an era of social distancing. “In the setting of COVID, when everything was getting crazy, it was remarkable to see the energy that GRASP brought to help,” adds Mullen. “Everyone was really busy, and it was amazing to see this group of people who wanted to use their expertise to help.”

Continue reading at Penn Today.

NB: Brian Litt is Professor in Neurology and Bioengineering.