As reported in Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology

Draper Lab Sets its Sights on Biomedical Initiative

By Amy L. Schwenker

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Mar. 10, 2003-- Draper Laboratory, a $250 million nonprofit research organization in Cambridge with a traditional focus on defense and aerospace projects, has announced the formation of a Biomedical Engineering Center.

According to Draper CEO Vince Vitto, it is not a physical space, but rather an initiative to focus Draper’s efforts in bioengineering under a single entity to ensure a coherent program and a clear interface with collaborators in the research and clinical world.

The center grew out of the lab’s effort to seek government and commercial sponsors for biomedical-related projects. The project is seeded by the lab’s internal research and development funding.

The center is headed by Jeffrey Borenstein, a physicist by training, and former micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) group leader at Draper, who has led the lab’s biomedical engineering program for the past four years. Borenstein is also an associate director at the Center for Integration of Medicine and Technology (CIMIT).

While Draper engineers contributed to various biomedical programs at local teaching hospitals and MIT throughout the lab’s history, the first focused initiative in this arena began in the mid-1990s with a collaboration among the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, MIT and Draper to develop retinal and cochlear implant devices.

“The fundamental idea was to take basic science developed at MIT, translate it into fieldable prototypes at Draper, and hand those prototypes off to Mass Eye and Ear for clinical evaluation,” said Paul Blasche, principal director of new business development and strategic planning at Draper. “By establishing sustained collaborations of this kind, we hoped to create a unique engine for accelerating the transfer of new technology from the bench-top to the bed-side.”

Draper built on the original initiative with a grant from the Keck Foundation to establish the Neural Prosthesis Research Center. In addition to cochlear and retinal prostheses, the center pursued work with laryngeal and vestibular (the region of the inner ear related to balance) implants as well. The balance prosthesis was a particularly good fit with Draper’s capabilities because the lab could adapt its work in inertial MEMS for military guidance and navigation systems to fit the human body.

MEMS devices are typically less than a couple of millimeters in size, and consequently, ideal candidates as implantable devices in humans.

At the same time, Draper joined MIT and the principal Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), as a founding member of CIMIT to investigate a variety of minimally invasive therapies.

CIMIT, a collaboration that now includes Partners HealthCare System, remains an important part of Draper’s biomedical engineering efforts. A major focus of CIMIT research is tissue engineering. Borenstein has joined principal investigator Dr. Joseph Vacanti of MGH in the field.

The team is developing methods for engineering replacement organs in the laboratory. Draper uses its MEMS fabrication capabilities to build polymer scaffolds that reproduce the microarchitecture of organs, including the blood vessel network. These scaffolds can then be used as the backbone on which cells can be grown into vessels. The lab recently made strides in developing a structure that closely resembles the blood vessel density of real organs.

On another CIMIT-related project, Draper is exploiting its systems integration and advanced packaging experience to develop biological agent and pathogen detection devices with potential biodefense applications. One such device is the MicroCanary, a project led by Dr. Chris Dube, which uses microfluidics and sensor technology for pathogen detection. So far, Dube’s team has shown the MicroCanary can specifically detect the pathogenic strain of E. coli bacteria against a background of non-pathogenic varieties.

Dube has conducted this work with Drs. Steven Calderwood and Jeffrey Gelfand of the Infectious Diseases Department at MGH.

Detectors built from biocompatible materials have potential to be implanted inside the body. The lab is using similar capabilities, along with its precision mechanical and electrical design skills in projects developing implantable drug delivery devices for targeted pharmaceutical treatments.

Many of the lab’s projects have received funding from commercial and government sources. One product developed at Draper has gone on to be commercialized by Sionex Inc., a startup founded by a former Draper employee with funding from Draper’s for-profit venture capital fund, Navigator Technology Ventures. The Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometer (FAIMS) sensor has been applied medically to aid in the diagnosis of heart disease and diabetes. Additionally, Draper has licensed directly related technology to Sionex for the development of biowarfare agent detection.

“Through our efforts and successes in biomedical projects such as tissue engineering and biosensing, I have experienced first-hand the value and strength of close collaborations between clinical research organizations and engineering institutions such as Draper,” Borenstein said. “I believe that this level of interaction and teamwork is a requirement for success in this field, and provides us with a unique advantage among engineering companies working in the biomedical arena.”

Amy L. Schwenker is a communications specialist at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. She can be reached at aschwenker@draper.com.

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