Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Microneedles For Wound Healing, Maya Matheny, Maggie Dubus, Lily Eribes

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Microneedles are a virtually painless and minimally invasive transdermal delivery system comprised of an array of micron-sized needles that can be used to deliver cells, drugs, proteins, and vaccines. However, a major challenge to this delivery method is controlling puncture depth. To advance the microneedle landscape, our project aims to identify and characterize the biomechanical cues between a microneedle puncture and a hydrogel skin phantom for pre-clinical testing A stopper microneedle design that controlled puncture depth into the phantom skin model patch to 150μm was tested on millimeter-thick mold-casted alginate slabs. The hysteresis loop differs in the presence and absence …

Minimally Invasive 3d Printed Microneedles For Glucose Monitoring, Eduardo Quintero, Justin Wong

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) provides an instantaneous real-time display of glucose level, rate of change of glucose, alerts, and alarms for actual or impending hypo- and hyperglycemia. Continuous glucose monitors are able to stay implanted on the patient anywhere from 7-14 days, giving patients and doctors valuable information to help improve patient care for diabetics, and providing them with a way to continuously monitor their blood glucose level concentration throughout the day.

Conventional methods of glucose detection such as blood glucose meters require the patient to gather frequent blood samples to generate instantaneous results that are only accurate as of …

Immuno-Anti-Infective Drug Design Using Bioai, Cathy Chen, Vivian Zhang

Bioengineering Senior Theses

According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today. A growing number of infections, like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, are becoming harder to treat as the antibiotics used to treat them become less effective. As a result, the primary concern for infections in the hospital setting is due to the S. aureus’s growing resistance to antibiotics. Therefore, in response to this global health threat, our project focuses on furthering the research in developing a drug that S. aureus will not develop resistance to. In this paper, we assess …

Poly(Adr-Ribose) Polymerase 14-Specific Inhibitor For Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Clarissa Silvers, Colin Sim

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerases, PARPs, are comprised of a family of 17 human enzymes that share a conserved catalytic domain that transfers ADP-ribose from nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) to target proteins. While significant proteomic-based efforts in the field have uncovered a host of potential targets for each of the various active PARP enzymes, an outstanding question remains as to what extent proximal versus distal interactions with the protein substrates govern target selection. In this work, we describe the use of tandem mass spectrometry to identify specific residues that are auto-modified in both PARP14 and PARP15 as well as their preferred modification …

Wearable Health Sensor, George Kouretas, Kelley Mccarroll

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted several populations, partially due to the lack of access to basic health care amenities, and emphasized the need for continuous telehealth monitoring of relevant biometric vitals. This need is further emphasized through research that has suggested that simple biometric vitals, including heart rate (HR), blood oxygen saturation rate (SpO2), and temperature, are relevant biomarkers for early disease diagnosis. The project aims to address this need through the design wearable health platform that uses novel, non-invasive techniques to monitor biometrics with the eventual goal to provide user insights into current health status and identify early …

Shear Detection Of Microencapsulated Cells For Monoclonal Antibody Production Scaleup, Kendall Defelippi, Dwight Johnson

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Scale the reported hydrodynamic shear values in industrial bioreactors for monoclonal antibody production to the shear stress measured in our custom microneedle prototype by extruding microencapsulated CHO cells. A correlation between the number of extrusion loops to reduction in cell viability enables a scalable screening method for bioprocessing efficiency.

Engineering Hydrogels For Delivery Of Therapeutic Proteins, Francesca Briggs, Daryn Browne

Bioengineering Senior Theses

In this project, we investigate how innate hydrogel properties can be leveraged for controlled protein drug release platforms. Therapeutic proteins have many valuable applications within the medical field, however, professionals often face many obstacles with obtaining controlled drug release. This paper analyzes how the manipulation of hydrogel properties can improve protein drug release rates. We started these investigations by varying hydrogel concentrations since we saw that this affects the release of small molecules. Additionally, we wanted to see what the addition of a second hydrogel network would do to protein release rates. These experiments concluded that raising polymer concentrations and …

Skin Phantom For Wearable Device Benchtop Testing, Laura Apolloni, Vindhya Mullapudi, Takumi Simon

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The biowerables constitute one of the fastests growing sectors of the medical device industry. Novel approaches for rapid prototyping have increased design and development speeds. However, in vivo testing that is currently used for many medical devices makes testing time-consuming, costly, and presents ethical issues. As an alternative, benchtop testing tools promise to alleviate these concerns. Artificial tissue phantoms that are capable of mimicking the characteristics of human tissues are required for demonstrating a medical device’s safety and efficacy in benchtop tests. While there are many hydrogels that are able to mimic these relevant properties of human tissue, creating a …

Classifying Brainwaves For Brain-Computer Interface Technology, Derrick Wang, Brendan Lawler

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The intention of this project is to develop a brainwave classification system that will help restore the independence of those with severe motor function impairments. While current brain computer interface (BCI) technology offers a means of control for those with limited mobility, severely motor disabled individuals represent a population in need of methods to restore independent motor control. Thus, the objective of our project is to utilize neural signals from electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings to develop a machine learning classifier. Since our specific goal is to help those with limited mobility, we are focusing on motion imagery tasks which elicit a …

Flow Visualization Of Bolus Microcapsule Delivery Through 3d Printed Microneedles, Sophie Quisling, Leana Vestal, Alexis Enstrom

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Microneedle arrays are an emerging technology that offers a novel drug delivery system to treat a variety of skin wounds and diseases. The needles deliver therapeutics to the epidermis layer of the skin and therefore establish advantageous qualities over the standard hypodermic needle as they are non-invasive, efficient in biologic absorption, and can be self-administered. This project investigates a custom 3D-printed hollow microneedle device created by a Santa Clara University Senior Design team in 2018 for microencapsulated cell extrusion to be applied for accelerated wound healing. The goal of our project is to operate in the therapeutic range for flowrate …

Milkguard: Predictive Modeling And Mobile App Development For Affordable, Usable Breast Milk Diagnostic, Beau Hsia, Emma Mccurry

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Breast milk is considered the gold standard of infant nutrition, but some infants around the world lack access to it due to maternal health complications or other considerations. Human breast milk banks do exist to try to alleviate this problem, but most are underfunded and have high operational costs, making it difficult for some infants to obtain safe, reliable donated breast milk.

Existing methods of testing breast milk are expensive, so the MilkGuard project was conceptualized in 2017 as a fast, economical, and highly usable bacterial contamination detection system. Prior to this year, previous MilkGuard teams had developed a system …

Predictive Model For Design Of A 3d Developmental Neurotoxicity Platform, Emma Barrett-Catton, Murial Ross, Cameron Read

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Exposure to developmental toxins during gestation have been shown to be linked to neurological disorders such as epilepsy, schizophrenia, and dyslexia [1] . In this report we describe efforts that represent the ground work to develop a predictive neurotoxicity model to test developmental toxicity on early neuronal differentiation from drugs and toxins for human consumption or exposure. Developmental toxins are toxins that prevent stem cell differentiation into neurons by impacting neural development [2] . Currency technologies used to evaluate a compound's potential as a developmental toxin are centered around culturing stem cells in a two-dimensional environment or exposing animal models …

Non-Ribosomal In Vivo Protein Ligation, Sarah Desautel, Kenneth Joseph, Victorino Miguel Francisco

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Protein ligation is a process integral to many biomedical applications, however the current industry standard, expressed protein ligation (EPL), is highly error prone and time-and-cost inefficient. Our team sought to improve this integral process by proving the efficacy of a new method of protein ligation using the transpeptidase Sortase A. Sortase A is known to efficiently bind two peptide fragments so long as they are attached to LPXTG motifs, which signal and activate the enzyme’s ligation abilities. Previous studies affirm Sortase A’s binding ability and efficacy in in vitro situations, however none have yet confirmed its abilities in vivo. Operating …

Classification Of Breast Cancer Using Deep Learning And Mammogram Images, Travis Kay, Derrick Dang Nguyen, Lashan Wijayawickrama

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among US women. Thus, it is important for doctors to detect and diagnose breast cancer as early as possible. Mammography has been used for about 30 years, but there have been rapid developments using digital mammography technology and computer aided systems to help improve breast imaging. Deep learning techniques are being developed to provide a more effective tool for the classification of breast cancer. We adopt a transfer learning approach and fine-tune a pre-trained convolutional neural network model for accurate classification of breast masses based on screening mammograms. The model …

G-Map: Gastrointestinal Myoelectric Activity Phantom, Kei Castleberry, Sarah King, Edie O’Connor

Bioengineering Senior Theses

In the biowearable industry, there is a need for benchtop testing methods that present cost-effective, consistent, and ethical alternatives to current preclinical testing. Artificial phantoms serve to meet this need by mimicking the clinically relevant elements that biowearables monitor. They act as a tool for demonstrating a medical device’s safety and efficacy. The objective of this project is to create a gastrointestinal (GI) phantom that emulates the electrical and material properties of the stomach, small intestine, and colon in order to test diagnostic GI biowearables. Our team also aimed to create a computer-simulated model of the phantom in order to …

High Throughput And On-Chip Analysis Of Engineered Extracellular Nano-Vesicles And Their Functional Characterizations, Brendan Johnson, Jiayi Zhang

Bioengineering Senior Theses

In recent years, extracellular vesicles (EVs) have shown great promises as drug delivery vehicles to treat various diseases, including cancer and neurological diseases. EV surface engineering is a critical step to achieve targeted drug delivery. By engineering EVs with transmembrane scaffolds, targeting molecules can be displayed on the EV outer surface, and cargos can be loaded into the EV lumen. However, EV heterogeneity and inadequate EV purification and characterization methods impose great challenges on understanding engineered EVs and choosing appropriate transmembrane scaffolds. To this day, surface engineered EVs are still limited to lab research. In this thesis, we modify the …

Skin Phantom For Biowearable Device Testing, Ruby Karimjee, Brooke Fitzwilson, Jordan Spice

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The biowearable industry currently utilizes animals, humans, and cadavers for testing skin mounted bio-devices. There is a need for a sustainable skin phantom that is capable of simulating the properties of skin. We proposed a skin phantom educational kit that emulates the perspiration and electrical properties (i.e. impedance spectrum) of skin. This kit can mimic the effects of different sweat concentrations and geometrical structures and allows students to visualize how these properties change electrical measurements. We designed a three-layered model composed of silicone rubber sandwiched between agar, which is similar to the skin's elastomeric and porous texture. We used simple …

Optimal Reactor Configuration Of A Microbial Fuel Cell Containing Bacteria Genetically Engineered To Degrade Urea, Ann Mcmonigal, Sarah Khoilian, David Bengford

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The original specific aim of this project was to use a microbial fuel cell (MFC) fueled by the catabolism of E. coli DH5α (pKAU17) bacteria in order generate current as a result of urea degradation. The initial design plan was to test the bacteria outside of the MFC, obtain power measurements,, and finally, construct an electrochemical model that would be compared to an existing theoretical model developed at SCU. Using a 0.25 L anode chamber, graphite electrodes and a sulfonated tetrafluoroethylene based fluoropolymercopolymer proton exchange membrane the galvanic cell was constructed. In response to constraints, the design plan was modified …

Novel Cancer Treatment Using Engineered Exosomes To Disrupt Cancer’S Immune Escape, Abena Boateng, Carley Fowler, Maritza Soria

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the United States¹. This disease has impacted billions worldwide and has led to an ever-increasing burden on the healthcare system. Over the last couple of years, researchers have improved upon conventional cancer therapy that includes chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. One novel approach is immunotherapy, which shows great potential because it has the ability to directly target cancerous cells². This is a viable treatment because most cancers develop the ability to block immune pathways and evade the killer immune cells in what is known as cancer immune …

Identification Of Messenger Molecule Between Mammalian And Bacterial Cells, Anna Fraser-Philbin, Alexander Heiler

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The rapid escalation of the antibiotic resistance crisis has brought attention to the decline in efficiency of antibiotics which have long been a cornerstone of modern medicine. This project aims to provide novel drug targets for the creation of anti-infective immunotherapies that can treat drug-resistant infections. The identification of said drug target(s) (Molecule X) will allow for the development of an antibody based drug that will neutralize bacterial virulence rather than killing the bacteria. Molecule X will be bound using the protein Sortase A (SrtA). SrtA is a surface protein that controls the virulence of gram positive bacteria by anchoring …

Cervis: Cervical Cancer Early Response Visual Identification System, Kira Palazzo, Lauren Serfas, Juliana Trujillo

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The goal of CERVIS is to increase screening for cervical cancer through the development of a low-cost, minimally invasive screening procedure for women in low-resource settings that requires minimal healthcare expertise. There currently exist two primary screening procedures: the Pap smear, primarily used in developed countries, and visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA), primarily used in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Both of these procedures require a high degree of healthcare training in order to administer and interpret, and are highly invasive, requiring direct interaction with the cervix. Our alternative procedure utilizes a particular bacteria, Fusobacterium nucleatum , within the …

Milkguard: A Low-Cost Hydrogel Sensor For The Detection Of Escherichia Coli In Donated Human Breast Milk, Emily Brogan, Ariana Haddad, Bridget Woody

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Breast milk is considered the gold standard of infant nutrition. However , many women around the world lack the ability to breastfeed their children due to disease, malnutrition, time constraints, or cultural considerations. Human breast milk banks exist to collect and distribute breast milk , allowing the greatest number of infants to have access to safe breast milk for optimal nutrition. To ensure the safety of the breast milk that is donated and distributed, milk banks must pasteurize and test donated breast milk for biological hazards such as bacteria. While pasteurization methods in the United States and other highly developed …

Brainwave Classification For Eeg-Based Neurofeedback, Brent Baculi, Stuart Cansdale

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The aim of this project was to find a way to differentiate active and rested brain signals in a patient using tasks without bodily movement to provide extremely motorly disabled patients a method of control for robotic devices that enable them to move independently of a caretaker. Although many control methods exist for less severely motorly impaired patients, this method would improve quality of life for all patients by allowing for movements to be controlled exclusively using the brain. The three steps for our project were to define the tasks and collect data, process the signals, and run the processed …

Microfluidic Liquid Biopsy For Cancer Prognosis, Brendan Heap, Anthony Ramirez Guerrero, Sam Nichols

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Leukemia is a deadly and common cancer, especially in children and adolescents. The misdiagnosis and unexpected complications during the treatment are some factors that increase the mortality rate of leukemia. The goal of our project was to create a device that would quickly and accurately assess these complications. While there are existing tests that can perform a single test for either metastasis or sepsis, there are none that can test for both simultaneously and rapidly. We propose to modify and combine some of these existing microfluidic designs as well as create a new component to perform a combinatorial assessment. While …

Predicting Depression Progression Rates In Radiotherapy Patients, Ardella Phoa, Joshua Vincent, Shani Williams

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Cancer is a highly prevalent disease that affects millions of people worldwide. In addition to the physiological effects of the disease, cancer patients are more likely to be diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Unfortunately, prior research has shown that MDD can also decrease the efficacy of radiotherapy cancer treatments. Currently, there is no way to predict, prevent, or mitigate this comorbidity, preventing physicians from administering supplemental therapies. In this paper, we propose a low-cost and efficient computational tool that can be utilized to quantify a patient’s likelihood of developing depression. To do so, we used PET images and a …

Engineering A Switchable Nanosystem For Customizable Therapeutics, David Diebold, Hanzhe Chen

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Exosomes are nanovesicles that are naturally secreted by mammalian cells in vivo for intercellular communications. Due to their inherent targeting ability, exosomes have a potential for therapeutic applications. However, due to their physiological derivation, the isolation of engineered exosomes has been a major obstacle to their therapeutic application, and successful disease-targeting has been difficult to control. Recently, we have developed an exosome technology that borrows from switchable Chimeric Antigen Receptor (sCAR) T-Cell Therapy and Strep-tag engineering to overcome these obstacles. Here, we describe the development of a de novo method to produce genetically modified exosomes with switchable targeting ability and …

Anti-Infective Mechanism-Based Drug Discovery Via Sortase A, Huong Chau, Alice Matsuda, Leepakshi Johar

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Sortase A is a transmembrane protein prominent in gram-negative bacterial strains. It is a virulence factor that anchors other proteins, which facilitate MRSA infections. In the long term, we plan to utilize this protein to create anti-infective drugs as antibiotic resistance continues to become a global health issue. Starting with five NIH drug candidates, we decided to first study Sortase A with B12 due to its historical past of ancient civilizations using natural sources of B12 to treat infections. Our senior design is further centered around understanding how vitamin B12 interacts with Sortase A in vitro, particularly the binding affinity …

Cervis: Cervical Cancer Early Response Visual Identification System, Julia Lanoha, Claire Hultquist, Rosie Mcdonagh, Hallie Mcnamara

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The goal of CERVIS is to make a substantial, positive impact in the cervical cancer screening space through the development of a minimally invasive, cost effective solution that enables women in low-resource settings to test for cervical cancer on a frugal and effective platform. In the developed world, there are a variety of options that can aid in early detection, including Pap smears. However, due to the high cost and laboratory requirements that accompany this procedure, women in low-resource settings rarely have access to this preventative care or regular screenings for cervical cancer. Using new research about the changes in …

Effects Of Glycation On Blood Protein Interactions With Nanomaterials: A Biophysical And Cytotoxicity Study, Karl Baumgartner, Madeline Eiken

Bioengineering Senior Theses

When engineered nanoparticles (NPs) enter into a biological system, the proteins and biomolecules in the system adsorb to the NP surface to form a “protein corona” (PC). The PC greatly influences NP transformations, biological interactions, and cell response. Further complicating the development of NPs for biomedical applications, disease states alter the population of proteins and changes the biophysical features of individual proteins through posttranslational modifications. Here-in, we aim to understand how glycation of the PC, as in uncontrolled diabetes, alters the NP-PC interaction and toxicity by conducting biochemistry and cell toxicity experiments. We focus upon 40 and 80 nm citrate-coated …

Microfluidic Chip For High Efficiency Microinjection Of Caenorhabditis Elegans, Delaney Gray, Alex Hadsell, Jessica Talamantes

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The terrestrial nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, is an invaluable model organism for the study of molecular and cellular processes due to their small size, rapid generation time, easy cultivation, and invariant cell number. Additionally, 40% of genes known to be associated with human disease have clear orthologs in the C. elegans genome. In C. elegans genetics research, microinjection of genetic material into the worms is critical. Although an established technique, manual microinjection is tedious, low-throughput, and requires an expert researcher. This thesis details a novel microfluidic device designed to perform high-throughput microinjection. This two-layer, PDMS-based chip integrates microfluidic elements to …