CBE guest seminar - Wearable, Closed-Loop Patch for Diabetes Management
Diabetes is a chronic metabolic disease when the pancreas cannot produce insulin or when the body cannot use the insulin it produces to maintain glucose balance in humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) statistics reveal that the number of diabetic patients worldwide is around 400 million. Developing a miniaturized, low-cost and smart closed-loop system for diabetes could significantly improve life quality and benefit millions of people. Conventional closed-loop devices are large in size and exorbitant. In this talk, I will present our recent studies about electrically-controlled flexible closed-loop patch for continuous diabetes management. Hollow microstructures were fabricated, and the outer layer of was functionalized to serve as a biosensing device for the in-situ sensitive and accurate monitoring of interstitial glucose. The inner layer was integrated with a flexible miniaturized pump to deliver insulin, and the delivery rate was electrically controlled by the glucose level from the biosensing device. The closed-loop system successfully stabilized the blood glucose levels of diabetic rats in a normal and safe range. The system is painless, miniaturized, cost-effective, and flexible. It is anticipated that it could open up exciting new avenues for fundamental studies of new closed-loop devices as well as practical applications for diabetes management.
Prof. Cui performed her undergraduate study in Environmental Engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology in China from 2001-2004, and performed her Ph.D study in Chemical Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from 2004-2007. Prof. Cui performed her postdoctoral research in Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in USA from 2007 to 2008, and postdoctoral research in Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University in USA from 2008 to 2011. She was an Assistant Professor in Department of Biological Engineering at Utah State University in USA from 2011 to 2015, and she was an Associate Professor in Department of Electrical Engineering and Computing Systems, and Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the University of Cincinnati in USA from 2015 to 2016. Due to family reason, she returned to China in 2016, and has joined Materials Science and Engineering at Peking University as an Associate Professor since 2016. Prof. Cui’s research interests are biosensing devices for precision therarpy, including bionanoelectronics, flexible and wearable biosensors, bioMEMS, and paper-based immunoassays. Prof. Cui has published about 80 corresponding-authored papers, and about 50 Chinese and US patents.