Michael J. McShane, Ph.D.

A new injectable material designed to deliver drug therapies and sensor technology to targeted areas within the human body is being developed by a Texas A&M University biomedical engineer who says the system can lock its payload in place and control how it is released. 

The research, led by Michael McShane, professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering who specializes in biomaterials, and graduate student Jason Roberts, appears in “Journal of Materials Chemistry B.” It details the development of a carrier system embedded with microscopic capsules that act as tiny reservoirs for medicines or even sensors that would alert a person in critical instances, such as when blood-sugar levels change. 

The technology, McShane notes, affords researchers a high degree of control over what is delivered to the body, where and when it is delivered and how much of it is delivered. That degree of flexibility, he says, could make the system an extremely useful tool when it comes to targeted drug delivery.

Dr. Mike McShane, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been named recipient of the 2012 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Transformative Research Award.
 
McShane, along with Natalie Ann Wisniewski of PROFUSA Inc., are working to develop highly miniaturized, injectable, sensors for continuous and simultaneous monitoring of multiple body chemistries that would allow physicians to remotely monitor a patient’s vital health markers.
 
The NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award initiative supports exceptionally innovative and/or unconventional research projects that have the potential to create or overturn fundamental paradigms. The primary emphasis of the Transformative Research Awards initiative is to support research on bold, paradigm-shifting, but untested ideas.