Recent Developments in Digital Health, MEMS-Based Drug Screening and Transdermal Drug Delivery

This talk will provide an introduction into our work in Digital Health and share recent results from ongoing efforts developing MEMS-based technologies for High-throughput drug screening (HTS) and Transdermal drug delivery. PARC has recently developed a novel microfluidic calorimeter that measures the enthalpy change of reactions occurring in 100 micron diameter aqueous droplets in fluoropolymer oil. Aqueous reactants flow into a microfluidic droplet generation chip and the temperature change in the droplets due to the heat of reaction is measured optically by recording the reflectance spectra of encapsulated thermochromic liquid crystals. This enables label-free, solution-based HTS for identification of compounds acting specifically on the intended targets at a 1000-fold shorter assay development time compared to other state-of-the-art technologies. We are also developing a ballistic transdermal drug delivery system that uses arrays of microchannels in a MEMS device to generate high-velocity collimated jets of particles with excellent spatial resolution for effective delivery of dry powder form therapeutics directly into the skin. Results from successful delivery of plasmid DNA (pDNA)-coated gold particles (1.15 micron diameter) through animal studies will be presented, including data confirming successful protein expression. This novel technology platform provides distinct capabilities to effectively deliver a broad range of particle formulations into the skin for vaccination and other needle-free transdermal drug delivery applications.