Why Sensors Are Critical for Personalized Medicine

Everybody seems to be talking about personalized medicine. But for all of the talk about it being the wave of the future, it has actually been discussed for some time. Many people were talking about personalized medicine a decade ago, when Northeastern University professor Thomas Webster, PhD began work on sensors that can gauge the variability of the human immune system. "Everybody's immune system is different," Webster says. "We have acquired immune systems and innate immune systems. Your acquired immune system changes as you age depending on what you are exposed to through life," he says.

"It is puzzling why we are implanting the same materials in people when we know that everybody has a different immune system," Webster observes. "If the two of us are going to respond to titanium differently because we have different acquired immune systems, why would both of us get the same exact implant?"

Why indeed. The average orthopedic implant lifetime is in the range of a decade to fifteen years. "I think that lifetime is so short because we basically insert the same chemistry into patients no matter what their history is--not even determining what their acquired immune system is," Webster says.

A sensor-equipped implant could detect whether a patient is sensitive to the titanium within it, which would trigger an immune cell response. "The sensor  would pick that up and respond by releasing bone growth factors or anti-inflammatory agents to minimize that immune response," Webster says. The drug release would be targeted to the precise area where it is needed. "It is not requiring somebody to take a drug."

Webster's research is not limited to using sensors in implants, however. "You can take the same idea and have a benchtop sensor where you put a drop of blood in the sensor and through this conduction property, you could identify which cells are in blood," he says, "If you have a more activated immune system, you will have changes in white blood cell count, in red blood cells, in proteins in your blood." The sensor could determine the levels of all of those, helping in disease diagnosis.  

To date, the researchers have published a number of papers on their work in journals such as Nanotechnology, The International Journal of Nanomedicine, and Biomaterials. "We've published each step of the way that we have developed along the way," he says. "It feels like a slow process because you have to choose the right materials to make these sensors out of, you have to do the electronics right to make sure that the conductivity can be measured and the information can be sent to a handheld device and then transmit it back to release a drug," he adds. "There are many complicated parts to the whole thing and that is what took us so long, and we are still trying to perfect it."

Note: For more on Webster's sensor research, see "Nanotech Sensors Keep a Close Eye on Orthopedic Implants."

Brian Buntz is the editor-in-chief of MPMN. Follow him on Twitter at @brian_buntz.