AMHERST — Some 10% of people shy away from medical attention because they have a severe fear of needles, and nobody likes getting poked. So what would life be like if needles were as thin as a hair?
Or how would life change if medical experts had a way to predict diseases, like Alzheimer’s, decades ahead of time?
These advancements are not simply dreams for the future, but have instead taken shape within the laboratories at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS). This month, the Institute installed two multimillion-dollar, world-class technological systems with the help of two grants totaling $3.6 million from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) that experts say will put UMass on the front lines of medical science and engineering.
The IALS used the funding to acquire a next-generation mass spectrometer for molecular research for $1.98 million, and a two-photon, 3D printing system for precision biofabrication for $1.58 million.
The mass spectrometer will allow researchers to view and analyze proteins and how they interact at the molecular level, ushering in a new era of medicine in which people can be diagnosed with diseases before they take root in the body, allowing for person-specific medications as opposed to mass-produced drugs.
The advanced 3D printer, only the second of its kind in New England, will allow production of the tiniest components, which is especially helpful in manufacturing medical devices. The components can be as thin as a human hair and need to be viewed through a microscope.
IAFS Director Peter H. Reinhart says the cutting-edge precision of these machines shows not what the world of medicine will look like in 100 years, but in today’s lifetime.
“The current world that we live in is to wait until somebody gets sick, find the pill and treat it,” Reinhart said. “I think in the future, we’re going to have biomarkers that will be able to predict when you are going to get a certain disease, and allow you to preemptively treat patients while they’re healthy. Think about that. That would be the brave new world.”
I think in the future, we’re going to have biomarkers that will be able to predict when you are going to get a certain disease, and allow you to preemptively treat patients while they’re healthy. Think about that. That would be the brave new world
Peter H. Reinhart, Director of the Institute for Applied Life Sciences at UMass
Reinhart continued, “The other [advancement] is not developing a drug for the population, but developing a drug for the individual. We’ll be able to take a sample and look at the spectrum of things that are inside. This is personalized medicine.”
The new systems
The two new systems are located in separate labs inside the IALS, a year-round research hub.
The two-photon, 3D-printing system looks like a glorified copy machine and fits onto a countertop. During a tour on Wednesday, Sunandita Sarker, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, showed the latest project sitting on her desk next to the machine.
In a petri dish was a minuscule square resembling a small Lego piece. Under a microscope, however, one could see bristles that rise up from the square. This device, she explained, is a prototype for a patch that would replace the need for painful injections.
“Ten percent of the population has needle phobia. So even though it’s very useful to get injections, because of needle phobia, people often decline medical treatments. So we are trying to make patches,” said Sarker.
Those hair-sized bristles on the square are actually needles. And the precision of the printer was on full display after Sarker pointed out that in the sides of those hollow bristles are holes that would release medicines.
“If you think about a needle, you always see the hole is right on top. And the problem with something like that is when you jab it into the tissue, it blocks the top,” she said. “[But with the printer] we can put those openings anywhere on the needle.”
In total, she said, it took about three to four hours to print the patch.
There are an infinite number of other ways to use the device, said Sarker. One application is manufacturing lenses for microscopic cameras. She said over the past 10 years cameras have gone from handheld devices to being a small dot on a phone. With the help of the two-photon printer, cameras will continue to get smaller.
“We can now make cameras that you can basically attach to the tip of your hair,” she said, explaining this technology could be used to check eyes or other parts of the body.
Just down the hall, the mass spectrometer stands taller than a doorway. The machine, known formally as a timsTOF fleX, weighs so much it required a crane to bring it into the lab.
The machine turns molecules into charged ions. Using a magnetic field and a laser, the machine then counts the different particles and reveals the entire chemical composition of the sample.
“Whether you start with a drop of blood or a single cell from inside your mouth, you can then separate the components in this machine. So it might be 20,000 components,” said Reinhart.
After the sample has been analyzed by the spectrometer, a graph of the various proteins that make up a molecule is shown on a computer screen. Each protein has a differing weight, enabling researchers to see how different proteins react under various conditions. This allows for a more efficient study of medicines and how they will react with a patient, and opens the door for detecting diseases before they take over the body.
For example, the protein Tau, named after the Greek letter, is strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Detecting the protein is a crucial step in preventing the disease.
“One of the things that’s holding back developing applications for a lot of diseases is we don’t know who has the disease, we don’t know how early you have it,” said Reinhart. “Once you’re diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it’s game over because you’ve had the disease for 10 years without anybody knowing. Well, what if you could just sample from inside your mouth, take one drop of blood, and this machine could find the biomarker that says, ‘Oh, you might have this disease.’ That’s the power.”
This is one of 10 spectrometers on campus, and it’s been about a decade since a new one was introduced. Compared to the other spectrometers, this latest system is like going from the first edition of the iPhone released in 2007 to the latest edition, said Stephen Eyles, director of Mass Spectrometry at UMass.
Community resources
Professors celebrated the new technology as not only an investment that will attract students, but also as a resource for the wider community.
“Unless you’re Pfizer or Merck, you don’t have the wherewithal to spend millions of dollars to put in infrastructure like this,” said Reinhart, noting that community members will be able to rent time in the labs.
Reinhart said, “What we have built at UMass and part of the reason we received the funding is we don’t just buy an instrument and stick it in a lab and let a professor use it. We buy an instrument, put it into a generally accessible, open lab, advertise it and let all of western Massachusetts, or anyone else in the U.S. or the world, if they want to use it, if they have an appropriate need for it.”
Govind Srimathveeravalli, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and director of the Center for Personalized Health Monitoring, said this accessibility aspect fits with the centuries-old mission of universities, which is to provide access to information.
The technology available at UMass now signals a new role for the university to be much more than a knowledge repository. “You’re not just storing knowledge, you’re providing access to this other thing, which is like our new role in society,” Srimathveeravalli said.
The experts said that these investments also mean that students get to use tools that have yet to even penetrate the engineering or medical industries. So when students go to apply for jobs, they will have a competitive edge over their peers.
“When students graduate and they go to apply for jobs, they have put their hands on and have experience using these technologies that people haven’t probably ever touched,” said Dave Follette, director of digital design and fabrication at UMass. “They can go into an interview and say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve used a nano fabrication printer. Oh yeah, I’ve used a mass spectrometer before.’ That’s totally different than someone who says, ‘Oh yeah, I majored in engineering. You know we talked about these devices maybe, but actually haven’t used them.'”
