MIT Research News' Journal

Benefiting human health through engineering

When Anasuya Mandal started her PhD in chemical engineering at MIT, she wanted to have a big impact and leave things better than she found them, a sentiment encapsulated by a Hindi phrase she often heard growing up, “janhit mein jaari,” which loosely translates into “continued in public interest.”

Whether developing microneedle technology to improve vaccine design and disease management, or joining student organizations to enhance student life, that is exactly what Mandal has done.

A journey to MIT

Mandal, who grew up in India, initially heard about MIT through the news articles she read when she was 8 or 9 years old and becoming interested in science.

“I thought, OK, there's this really great school in the world,” she recalls. “But I never thought that down the line I'd be here.”

Mandal’s interest in science and her high score on the national exam she took at the end of high school gained her admission to the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, an exclusive engineering university. There, Mandal found herself drawn to research. For her, graduate school was a logical next step.

Mandal was attracted to the applied, interdisciplinary nature of the chemical engineering program at MIT, and she arrived on campus with a clear goal for her research.

“I wanted to do something that would impact human health at the end of the day, and to make a product that somebody would have in their hands that they would use,” she says.

It is an impulse that Mandal attributes in part to her parents, who are both doctors. However, Mandal wasn’t sure about the specific nature of her research until she met Paula Hammond, the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, who told her about a medical technology called microneedles.

“That was the coolest thing I'd ever heard of,” Mandal says.

Mandal, who is co-advised by Hammond and Darrell Irvine, a professor of materials science and engineering and of biological engineering, has been completely absorbed in research on microneedles ever since.

A tiny device with a big impact

Microneedle technology, which has been around for a couple of decades, is based on a simple concept: Tiny cones, or microneedles, are attached to a small patch that is applied to the surface of the skin like a Band-Aid. The cones penetrate the skin, but not deeply enough to hit nerves or blood vessels.

Most research on microneedles has focused on their potential for simple, efficient medication and vaccine delivery. However, Mandal realized microneedles could be useful in two completely different capacities: as a tool to aid chronic disease management, and as a way of gathering information to improve vaccine design.

Mandal’s device consists of 70-80 clear, plastic microneedles, each 0.6 millimeters long and coated with a dehydrated hydrogel. The microneedles are attached to a clear plastic disc, 1 centimeter across. When the device is applied to the skin, the microneedles penetrate just deep enough to reach into the dermis, just underneath the protective top layer of the skin.

“It feels like a Lego block that’s pressed up against your skin,” Mandal says. “It takes maybe a day or two to regenerate the skin, and you might not even have any redness, inflammation, or swelling.”

One application of Mandal’s research is for people with autoimmune diseases such as lupus who must use medication to manage disease flares. Flares can be predicted by an increase in certain biomarkers, which are currently monitored with monthly blood draws. However, these biomarkers are also present in the interstitial fluid (the fluid in tissues) that is the target of Mandal’s microneedle device.

The dehydrated hydrogel on the microneedles absorbs the fluid, which can then be separated out and analyzed. The process is simple and painless, and Mandal envisions it being used by patients at home to monitor their biomarker levels on a much more frequent basis.

“It basically gives them a chance to regulate their medication and have a better quality of life,” she says.

Mandal’s research also has applications for vaccine design. In general, a successful immunization introduces just enough of a virus (or other foreign substance) to prompt the formation of resident memory cells that remain in the tissues and are prepared to immediately recognize the virus and attack it if it returns. However, when a vaccine is administered, it is difficult to know how many resident memory cells form, where they form, how long they live, etc.

The dehydrated hydrogel that coats Mandal’s microneedles can be laden with chemical cues that are released once the gel is rehydrated with interstitial fluid. Over a 12- to 24-hour period, the cues attract nearby resident memory cells, which become embedded in the gel. The cells can be removed with the patch, separated out, and studied to inform vaccine design.

“I think what's most exciting is that we can pull out information about the immune system with my device, that is not in the blood,” she says. “So this becomes a diagnostic tool capable of supplementing the data you would gather from a blood draw.”

Right now Mandal is testing her device on mice, and she hopes it will soon be used on larger animals.

Making things better

During her time at MIT, Mandal has also been committed to improving life for her fellow students. She has been part of an Institute-wide program called REFS, short for Resources for Easing Friction and Stress. Through the program, Mandal was trained in mediation and conflict management, so she could serve as a sounding board and a confidential resource for her peers. She then started a REFS program in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

For the past year, Mandal has also been involved in the graduate student advisory board for chemical engineering, which advises the faculty and administration about how to improve the graduate student experience. Mandal has worked on negotiating better hours for teaching assistants, revamping the feedback process between advisors and students, and finding ways to improve advisor-student relationships.

Working to improve her school is nothing new for Mandal; as an undergraduate she served as a student mentor and wrote for her college newsletter.

“The basic motive has always been to make things better for anybody who's stepping into my shoes after me,” she says.

Gathering more skills

After finishing her PhD, Mandal hopes to learn more about the business side of medical products, gaining knowledge that will complement her scientific skill set and help her start answering some big questions.

“So many people make products and devices,” she says. “But why do some of them succeed? Why do some of them fail? What are the factors that make something successful and what do you keep in mind? How do you strategize about all of these things?”

Mandal is particularly interested in health care consulting, which would allow her to utilize her scientific knowledge while helping pharmaceutical and biomedical companies figure out how to develop their products and bring them to market. Mandal is excited about the fast pace of consulting and the possibility of having an immediate impact. For her, it offers the opportunity to step away from the lab bench and take a more big-picture approach to the biopharma landscape.

Somewhere down the line, Mandal even envisions starting her own company to commercialize her microneedle device or another medical product.

“I've always wanted to have a way to make somebody else's life better,” she says. “A way to utilize the knowledge that I have so that it makes the world a better place.”

Startups show promise, progress at Demo Day

Earning early customers and funding, and building a product, can be difficult for fledgling startups. But the startups that participated in this year’s MIT delta V summer accelerator proved at last Friday’s Demo Day that they’ve already achieved those milestones and more.

Demo Day is the capstone event for the 12-week MIT delta V startup accelerator (formerly the Global Founders’ Skills Accelerator), where entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to the MIT community, investors, and business leaders. MIT delta V, hosted in the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, provides the startups with funding, mentorship, office space, and other resources from June through August.

This year, 13 startups from MIT and one from Mexico pitched their innovative business plans to a capacity crowd gathered in Kresge Auditorium, which included guest speaker Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker.

Business ideas included online marketplaces that make freight transportation more efficient, a text message-based support network, a platform for cheaper online education in Africa, a 3-D-imaging system to monitor weight lifters, and an at-home white blood cell counter. The startups drew enthusiastic applause when they detailed their recent milestones, which included securing customers and solid user bases, building working prototypes, entering clinical trials, establishing industry partners, and earning significant grants, venture capital, and revenue.

While opening Demo Day, Martin Trust Center Managing Director Bill Aulet called the event “the greatest day of entrepreneurship at MIT. Every year, it raises the bar of what MIT can do.”

Launched in 2012, MIT’s summer accelerator has helped launch 44 startups, 30 of which are now thriving companies, including LiquiGlide, Nima, Accion Systems, and Infinite Analytics. Combined, these companies have raised tens of millions of dollars and created hundreds of jobs.

This year, the accelerator was renamed MIT delta V after the mathematical symbol for a change in velocity, caused by acceleration. Or, as Aulet put it, “the derivative of velocity is an accelerator.” MIT delta V, Aulet said, takes startups through the final stretch to “escape velocity,” where they’re ready to enter the market.

In his talk, Baker discussed the burgeoning innovation economy in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, before taking a seat in the crowd to catch some of the action. Baker noted MIT’s recent partnership with the state on the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) Institute, as well as the rising industries of medical technology, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, and digital health. “There is so much intellectual capital … right here in Massachusetts,” he said.

The other guest speaker was Dharmesh Shah SM ’06, co-founder of online marketing company Hubspot.

Startups represented nine industries: logistics, energy, analytics, financial technology, healthcare, agriculture technology, education technology, retail, and media technology. In total, 86 student entrepreneurs launched 17 startups in MIT delta V. Nearly 30 percent were undergraduates. Apart from providing mentorship and office space, the accelerator offers up to $20,000 in funding and $2,000 for living expenses.

Startups will present at two additional Demo Days, held in New York City on Sept. 15 and in San Francisco on Sept. 22. Demo Day was a kickoff event for MIT’s entrepreneurship festival, called t=0, which hosts a variety of events on campus until Sept. 16.

Signs of progress

At the event, startups demonstrated signs of strong progress. For example, mental-health platform Lean on Me, founded by MIT undergraduates, has established a solid user base. The platform uses an algorithm to match anonymous users with volunteer peer supporters, who chat privately with the users about issues via text message. After piloting the platform at MIT in February, the startup now has 18 volunteer supporters, more than 150 users, and has fielded more than 2,500 text messages.

In October, Lean on Me is bringing its platform to the University of Chicago, “with 36 new supporters, expanding access for thousands more college students,” co-founder Charlie Andrews, a senior studying mathematics and computer science, said in his pitch.

Other startups demonstrated equally impressive numbers, all within one month of opening operations: dot Learn, which developed a platform to compress online video courses so they’re cheaper for African users who pay high prices for bandwidth, has enrolled 500 students in one of its courses. Kumwe Logistics, which gives African truck owners smartphones to offer their services to shippers online, has now shipped 400,000 pounds of goods and has an upcoming contract for double that number. Fleteya, a team from Mexico developing an online platform that connects empty shipping trucks on the road with nearby shippers, so trucks never travel empty, now has 200 active carriers.

MIT-student startup Leuko Labs is developing a device for counting white blood cells, which lets patients track their immune systems at home. It’s now going through clinical trials, and Massachusetts General Hospital has expressed interest in purchasing the device.

To use the device, which is about the size of a small shoebox, a patient places a finger inside a small hole. Imaging technology inside captures the capillaries in the skin just above the nail. Because these capillaries are so small, white blood cells squeeze through one by one. On video, a white blood cell appears as a white gap in a black stream of red blood cells. Custom algorithms count those gaps, and a number appears on a small screen that’s equivalent to the white blood cell count.

“That’s really an indicator for your immune system,” co-founder and co-inventor Aleksandra Kalinowska, a senior studying mechanical and biomedical engineering, told MIT News. “If [patients] know their white blood cell count is dropping really low, they can take preventative medications to prevent infection and hospitalization.”

Chemotherapy patients, who need to keep track of their immune systems for treatments, are a likely group of users for the device, which has potential to become a consumer diagnostic tool.

Hands-on entrepreneurship

For many students, such as Kalinowska, MIT delta V was the first hands-on experience with building a startup. She met with customers, built a business plan, and organized clinical trials. But the best advantage of the accelerator? The network, she said. “If we wanted an expert from a field, or a professor from another field, or a person from industry, we’d reach out to the alumni network of [Sloan] and … we’d get to the person we needed,” Kalinowska said. “I think that’s extremely valuable and something that would have been hard to get without MIT or the accelerator.”

For mechanical engineering graduate student Jacob Rothman, who co-founded Perch, which is developing a video-tracking system for weight lifters, MIT delta V was an “immersive” first step in entrepreneurship.

The Perch system consists of 3-D cameras attached to weight racks that monitor the lifter’s joints and the weights to provide information on reps, sets, velocity, and form. If the bar is slanted while squatting (where the bar must be horizontal across a lifter’s shoulders), for instance, the system will alert the lifter. Building the system took a lot of trial and error, so it was good to be in MIT delta V, Rothman told MIT News. “It was a very safe environment to … immerse myself in entrepreneurship,” he said. “There’s a lot of mentors, a lot of advisors, and they provided us with funding. They gave us the resources to experience it, and fail, and try again.”

Currently, Perch has a working prototype in an MIT weight room and this fall will bring the system to weight rooms at Boston University, Harvard University, and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.