Stefan Wilhelm, an associate professor in the OU Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering, and several students in his Biomedical Nano-Engineering Lab have recently published an article in the journal Nano Letters that outlines their recent important nanomedicine advancement.
The group examined how to create tools that produce nanomedicines, such as vaccine formulations, directly at the point of care. In doing so, the large centralized facilities, shipping challenges and extreme cold storage challenges faced during the COVID19 pandemic would no longer limit vaccine distribution.
Wilhelm, with student researchers such as Hamilton Young, a senior biomedical engineering student, and Yuxin He, a biomedical engineering graduate research assistant, used 3D printer parts to mix fluid streams together containing the building blocks of nanomedicines and their payloads in a T-mixer format.
"This mixing device is essentially a T-shaped piece of tubing that forces two fluid streams to flow into each other, mixing nanomaterial and payload components together. Once mixed, the final product would exit through the other end," Wilhelm said. "This mixing concept is used in industrial processes, so we wondered if we could make these devices as cost-efficient as possible."
