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Texas A&M researchers tackle Sickle Cell Disease with... USBs?

Posted at 6:25 PM, Mar 19, 2021
and last updated 2021-03-19 19:26:46-04

COLLEGE STATION, TX — A team of researchers at Texas A&M's Biomedical Engineering Department are studying a new possibility to treating Sickle Cell Disease through a more personalized approach.

The team is working to create new types of disease models to better understand its impact on patients by mimicking the symptoms with a mechanical platform. By using an organ-on-a-chip, USB sized device to mimic the functions of an organ inside the human body, the research team can now test new drug treatments on these chips to simulate mild and severe sickle cell cases and test different treatments

"With these devices what we expect is that you could actually start not only treating the patients but also start predicting whether a patient might have a chance of actually developing a stroke or not so you can start doing early intervention of that patient so in a way what we are trying to accomplish with these platforms is really push the field of personalized medicine. Dr. Abhishek Jain, Texas A&M Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Sickle Cell disease affects between 70,000 to 100,000 Americans and its symptoms include chronic pain, anemia, bacterial infections and can lead to strokes.

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