From 3D-printed bones to portable defibrillators, alumni and faculty of Washington State University have contributed a number of health-care innovations to the world. Check out some of the devices and new techniques below.
Read about health-care smartphone apps developed by two WSU alumni in “What’s app?”
Portable heart defibrillator
Clint Cole (’87 B.S. Comp. Sci., ’00 M.S. Elec. Engr.)
Because it required less energy, the defibrillator developed by Clint Cole and his research group could be lighter and smaller by a factor of five, making it portable—and ubiquitous.
A former paramedic, Cole is an inventor, CEO, and college instructor at WSU.
Read more in “This man might save your life—or teach your class”
3D-printed bone scaffolds
WSU professors, and husband and wife, Amit Bandyopadhyay and Susmita Bose set out to solve the puzzle of how to imitate nature’s growth of the human bone. They have also used 3D printing to create material to assist in the process.
Read more in “3D printer used to make bone-like material” and “Building the Perfect Bone”
Susmita Bose talks about the 3D printing of bone-like material (Courtesy WSU News)
E-bandages and silver
As the efficacy of conventional antibiotics wanes, WSU researchers are reinventing old ideas to fight bacterial infection.
That includes a nontoxic way to use tiny amounts of silver to control difficult-to-treat bacterial infections that often occur after orthopedic surgery, developed by Amit Bandyopadhyay and Susmita Bose at their lab in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Another method developed by Haluk Beyenal, the Paul Hohenschuh Distinguished Professor in the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, and his team, can better use an electric current to produce a disinfectant—hydrogen peroxide. They carefully control the current to assure a specific electrochemical reaction at an exact rate.
Read more in “Fighting infection a new, old way”
Chimeric Designs
Chimeric Designs is a protein engineering company set out to enable a safer and more effective targeted therapy for cancer. We expect that our proprietary technology will enable new treatments for a wide range of cancers.
The company was founded by WSU faculty and alumni: chemical engineer Kevin T. Gray [GRAD], molecular biologist Afshin Khan, pharmacologist Joseph Harding, and others.
Read more about Chimeric Designs
3-D tissue culture “scaffolds” to research cancer
Weimin Li at the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine is developing cultures to better mimic cancerous tissues, and achieve more accurate results.
Read more in “A new dimension to fighting cancer”
Gene therapy to prevent muscle loss
New gene therapy developed by WSU muscle biologist Dan Rodgers shows promise in deterring muscle loss from cancer and muscular dystrophy.
Read more in “Gaining on muscle loss”
Do you know of more WSU health innovations to add to the list?