A Chip in Time…

…may save lives. Tony Guiseppi-Elie is developing biochips that can be implanted in soldiers to monitor damage from battlefield trauma.

In its “Future Warrior” program, Pentagon planners are conducting outside-the-box thinking about how to equip the U.S. infantryman of 2025. In scenarios that make the imperial troopers of the Star Wars movies seem the products of impoverished imaginations, futurists envision soldiers wearing lighter, stronger body armor, helmet visors that display data transmitted from headquarters, microphones that provide 360-degree enhanced hearing, chameleon-like camouflage that literally matches background colors -- and sensors that monitor the physiological life-signs of the fighter.

Some of the research for the warrior-of-the-future concept is taking place here in Richmond . Anthony Guiseppi-Elie, a chemical engineering professor at the VCU School of Engineering, is developing microscopic biosensors that can be implanted in muscle tissue and transmit real-time data on glucose and lactate levels that indicate the severity of injury of a soldier who has been wounded. (See also “Phenomenal Fiber,” about the M5 super-fiber that could supplant Kevlar in body armor, under development by Magellan Systems.)

“Battlefield surgery hasn’t changed significantly since World War I,” says Guiseppi-Elie, who runs VCU’s multi-disciplinary Center for Bioelectronics, Biosensors and Biochips (C3B). An ability to monitor a soldier’s physiological status will represent a tremendous breakthrough. “Once someone has been hit,” he says, “triage decisions can be improved through more precise information and more rapid access to a wounded soldier’s physiological status.”

Improving soldiers’ survivability is a top Pentagon priority. Last year, the Department of Defense Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program granted $3 million to the C3B center to support the development of implantable biochips with remote powering and readout capabilities. Guiseppi-Elie’s team at VCU, which includes VCU’s Reanimation Engineering Shock Center (VCURES) Associate Director Dr. Kevin Ward, will develop a biosensor that will be integrated with a microscopic transmitter-receiver to be devised by a NASA research team.

When an individual is severely traumatized, resulting in significant blood loss, traditional vital signs such as blood pressure and pulse rate are notoriously inaccurate at diagnosing the severity of injury. The ability to understand and monitor events at the cellular level provides more objective data upon which to base life-and-death decisions.

The reduction of blood flow and delivery of oxygen results in a build-up of lactate in the tissues. The ability to keep an individual alive is strongly correlated with lactate levels. By measuring the lactate at regular intervals, along with corresponding levels of glucose, medical technicians can quickly ascertain the extent of damage and set intelligent priorities about whom to treat first.

Another military application could be for search and rescue. If a helicopter gets shot down, how badly injured are the pilots and passengers? Do they require immediate rescue or can the operation wait?

Potential uses in the civilian sector dwarf those in the military. NASA regards the technology as helpful to tracking the health of astronauts in space. Cardiologists might use the technology to remotely track the health of their patients in congestive heart failure, a condition found in almost epidemic proportions. Rescue squads could use the technology to get a quick read-out of an accident victim; while speeding to the hospital, rescue technicians could wire vital signs ahead to the emergency room. Likewise, Guiseppi-Elie suggests, civilian trauma centers could use the technology to perform triage of victims from everything from natural disasters to terrorist bombings.

Guiseppi-Elie also serves as president and chief scientific officer of a company, ABTECH Scientific, Inc., he set up to commercialize his biochip discoveries. ABTECH's biochip technology gives rise to a suite of enzyme biochips (enzyme biosensors), immunodiagnostic biochips (immunosensors), and DNA biochips (genosensors) with potential markets in the physician's office, emergency rooms and pathology labs.

-- January 12, 2004