School of Biomedical Engineering, Sciences, & Health Systems
THE RELEASE HYDROGEL
Table of Contents College of Engineering
53
Civil Engineering
63
Computer Engineering
66
Computer Science
68
Electrical Engineering
70
Materials Science & Engineering
71
Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics
75
iSchool: College of Information Science & Technology
87
Information Technology
88
LeBow College of Business
91 92
Business & Engineering
92
Business Administration
93
Economics
101
Finance
103
Marketing
103
College of Nursing & Health Professions Nursing
THROUGH
Spinal cord injury is one of the most prevalent problems in today’s society. The overall objective of this project was to use biomedical engineering principles to create a delivery system for the regeneration of spinal cord tissue. Our delivery systems were comprised of an alginate gel which was used to release the protein chymotrypsin. One of our delivery systems used dextran sulfate as an addition to alginic acid, while the other system used just alginic acid. The release of chymotrypsin was used to model the release of Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) in the human body. We chose negatively charged Alginic acid to create our alginate gel due to the fact that alginate is compatible with human body and easily binds with positively charged chymotrypsin. The chymotrypsin from the alginate gel was released in to Hank’s Buffer, a model for cerebrospinal luid, and measured every 24 hours through luorescence testing. To aid in the measure of its release, the chymotrypsin was labeled with FITC (a luorescence molecule). After 12 days of measurements, our results showed that our systems can be successfully used to release chymotrypsin. The results met our original objective by showing that alginate gel is a practical delivery system to treat spinal cord injury. However, the next step would be to modify this delivery system to control the rate of release of the growth factor into the body and thus prolong the treatment as necessary.
Bhavit Vora Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Yinghui Zhong Faculty Mentor School of Biomedical Engineering, Sciences, & Health Systems
104 104
School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, & Health Systems
4
87
Information Systems
Biomedical Engineering
CHYMOTRYPSIN
53
Chemical Engineering
Software Engineering
OF
105 105
STAR Scholars Summer Showcase 2011
STAR Scholars Summer Showcase 2011
117