Imagine a future with a bandage that could sense whether an infection was developing and could tell the patient or caregiver to get the wound checked by a medical professional.
Well, that future has arrived in the form of the “smart bandage,” a new technology created by a University of Rhode Island chemical engineering professor and a former graduate student.
The technology is designed to work with a wearable smartphone-like device to monitor infection levels in a wound covered by the smart bandage, detecting concentrations of hydrogen peroxide to trigger electronic alerts. Creators of the smart bandage said it can diagnose an infection at an early stage, potentially saving patients with chronic wounds from drastic measures. It would also reduce the need for continuous checking and redressing of wounds, thereby necessitating fewer antibiotics and disruptions to healing.
“These patients can develop chronic wounds that can get infected and get sepsis and create a whole host of horrible problems,” said URI assistant professor Daniel Roxbury.
The invention needs further development so it can be commercialized, potentially by incorporating it into a manufacturer’s existing wound care products, said Roxbury, who created the smart bandage over two years, alongside former URI graduate student Mohammad Moein Safaee.
“From the commercialization aspect, I’ve been talking with materials companies and pharmaceutical companies that could be interested in this particular platform,” said Roxbury, who runs the NanoBio Engineering Laboratory at URI.
Initially, the intended customers will not be people walking into a pharmacy to buy one. When the product first rolls out, Roxbury estimated the system would cost a few thousand dollars, and they would be marketed to health care facilities. The price is primarily to cover costs for the small computer that wirelessly detects signals from the bandage, which are made by embedding single-walled carbon nanotubes in the bandage fibers, Roxbury said. The nanotube-embedded bandages themselves cost around 50 cents each to produce, he said.
‘We utilized cutting-edge microscopes to study the ... materials.’
MOHAMMAD MOEIN SAFAEE, Former University of Rhode Island graduate student
“Our target for customers is going to be nursing homes … hospitals and other settings with a lot of patients who are bedridden, who could be developing pressure ulcers, basically from not moving,” Roxbury said. “You can imagine a hospital buying a few. The initial investment of buying the detector, I think, could put this out of reach for normal people for at-home use. But again, if we can scale up and mass produce the detector, we can bring that cost way down as well.”
After publishing papers about the science behind the smart bandage in January and filing for intellectual property protection, the researchers moved to verification of functionality, testing if the bandages would function properly in a petri dish with live cultured cells that would be found in wounds, Roxbury said. That was successful at showing the technology could detect the presence of hydrogen peroxide generated by the wound tissue, Roxbury said.
Now the project is moving to “in vivo testing,” in partnership with Brown University, Roxbury said. That’s where the technology will soon be tested on mice.
The project began two years ago in an attempt to solve the dilemma of encapsulating single-walled carbon nanotubes within microfibers without any leaching of materials, while keeping the nanotubes sensitive to hydrogen peroxide levels. Roxbury and URI credited Safaee, who has since joined a postdoctoral program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for taking a lead effort in making the smart bandage a reality.
“We utilized cutting-edge microscopes to study the structure of the materials that we produced,” Safaee said. “I also utilized a home-built, near-infrared spectrometer to optimize the optical features of the textiles.”
Roxbury called it a “challenging engineering problem.”
“When trying to optimize the placement of the nanosensors into the fibers, it really comes down to a number of factors, after identifying the different variables we can tune in our setup,” Roxbury said. “There’s a little bit of luck there, in terms of finding the right combination. Once we had that, we immediately filed the IP protection.”
The challenge with using nanotubes has been immobilizing them in a biocompatible manner such that they stay sensitive to their surroundings, according to Roxbury.
“The microfibers that encapsulate the carbon nanotubes in the smart bandage accomplish both of these tasks,” Roxbury said. “The nanotubes do not leach from the material, yet they stay sensitive to hydrogen peroxide within the wounds.”
The project is focusing on optimizing bandages for large, open wounds.
“There’s a big need there, basically, to know whether you have an infection without having to take off the huge bandage,” Roxbury said. “If you know in real time without really disturbing the patient too much, it’d be a lot better, giving you a readout without requiring a nurse to take off a bandage.”
While trying to commercialize the product, Roxbury said his lab is simultaneously working to maximize its functionality.
“Our top concerns are size and cost and user-friendly interface,” Roxbury said. “We’re optimizing the detection range and increasing the stability of the bandage.”
Marc Larocque is a PBN staff writer. Contact him at Larocque@PBN.com.
