Slow and Steady Drug Delivery Keeps Biomedical Devices Kicking

Researchers from MIT have developed a novel method to locally deliver drugs and prevent immune activity around implanted biomedical devices over several months. The method is based on the formation of crystals of immunosuppressive drugs, which can be included in devices and slowly dissolve over the course of months. While this method substantially increases the length of time tested devices can function, difficulty of crystallizing certain drugs or introducing them into specific devices may prove to be a challenge in adapting this method to other systems. Even so, for many cases, this method will likely substantially reduce the difficulty of maintaining device stability for extended periods of time. Continue reading Slow and Steady Drug Delivery Keeps Biomedical Devices Kicking

Electric Forest

Semiconductors are materials that are used as switches in modern electronics. While the switches in your computer and smartphone are made of silicon, carbon-based organic semiconductors offer the potential for flexible, inexpensive electronics. Toward this goal, students in CHEM 100R have synthesized a novel organic semiconductor. For an organic semiconductor film to perform well, it must be processed so that is both crystalline and continuous. Students in CHEM 165 … Continue reading Electric Forest

Crystaleyes

One of our Instagram followers won a print of this beautiful image! Be sure to follow us on Instagram @SITN_Harvard for your chance to win some SciArt. This beautiful contribution from Don Pottle is best described by the legend himself: “A few years ago, I was asked by a maker  of  contact lenses to examine a few samples of used contact lenses.  There was a suspicion of … Continue reading Crystaleyes