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MHT talks with Tanja Dominko, WPI researcher and CellThera president
MHT talks with Christopher Lambert of WPI Center for Neuroprosthetics
MHT talks with Grant McGimpsey, director of the WPI Center for Neuroprosthetics
Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Neuroprosthetics are developing better prosthetic options for amputees — from engineering protein-based seals for implanted prosthetics to regenerating muscle tissue itself.
Last month, Congress gave WPI $1.6 million for research on implantable neuroprosthetics, which would give amputees a more natural feel and function. An implantable neuroprosthetic involves inserting a titanium shaft into the remaining bone of an amputated leg, for example. That shaft would be fastened to a prosthetic that would be connected to nerve endings in the leg, providing better and more natural control than current prosthetics, according to Grant McGimpsey, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and director of WPI’s Bioengineering Institute, home to the Center for Neuroprosthetics.
WPI researchers are concentrating on regenerating tissue to make a seal around the shaft and prevent infection, and engineering tiny, but not-quite-nanoscale, wires to regenerate nerves and connect the prosthetic to the nervous system. Finished products from the research remain several years down the road.
About five years ago, McGimpsey and other WPI researchers visited the rehabilitation center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center at the request of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick, Md. The WPI researchers had collaborated with Army researchers on other projects, and the Army thought WPI’s expertise could be used to help solve problems associated with prosthetic limbs, including awkwardness, pain and discomfort. “It was a transforming experience for me when I went to the rehabilitation ward. You had young men and women who had suffered terrible injuries as a result of their service in Afghanistan and Iraq, had lost limbs — sometimes multiple amputations. I decided at that point that it was really necessary for me and for WPI to try to do something to address their problems,” McGimpsey said.
At Walter Reed, McGimpsey talked to David Rozelle, an Army major who lost a lower right leg in Iraq when his Humvee hit a land mine and has since returned to active duty, including another tour in Iraq. McGimpsey said talking to Rozelle, who competes in Ironman competitions, was inspirational and educational. Rozelle uses several prosthetic legs for different purposes, and he told McGimpsey none of them are comfortable. The weight load of the body on the prosthetic and residual limb causes discomfort. That led the WPI researchers down the road to implantable prosthetics, McGimpsey said.
In WPI’s Worcester lab complex — which is half modern glass development, half brick former mill building — Christopher Lambert is trying to harness nerve impulses using microscale gold wire, finding the right substrate to facilitate the appropriate level of electricity, reconnecting severed nerves and possibly enabling the control of a prosthetic by the human nervous system. He’s also trying to regenerate neurons and direct them in channels etched in gold using surface chemistry to control the neuron growth.
Lambert called the body’s network of neurons “mindboggling.”
“A biological system is so beautifully set up to transmit those nerve impulses, at the right speed, to make sure they go where you want them to go and they don’t go where you don’t want them to go,” Lambert said. “It’s a beautifully arranged system.”
In a bit of serendipity, he’s collaborating on the project with his cousin, Stephen Lambert, formerly of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center who is now a biochemist at the University of Central Florida. Down one floor, WPI professor and CellThera Inc. president Tanja Dominko explains her research on regenerating skeletal muscle tissue. Dominko and her team have shown that human skin cells, transplanted onto a wound site on a mouse, can take on the striated attributes of human muscle cells. Down the road, the technique could lead to the replacement of muscle tissue in wounds before scabbing happens; it could also help replace neuroprosthetics with bioprosthetics, or replacement limbs, Dominko said. She hopes someday it will be possible to regenerate muscle tissue on a wound site directly, by essentially tricking the cells into a reptilian response.
“I don’t mind comparing myself to a frog for this purpose at all, because it would be really cool to do that,” Dominko said.
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