Bitter Pills: A Seminar by Dr. Zaman
This week Dr. Zaman held a seminar at the BU African Studies Center on one of his main areas of research, compromised drug supplies in Africa. Quality control of drugs in developing countries is a growing problem, one that can stem from deliberate counterfeiting of drugs. More commonly, though, the quality of drugs declines due to poor management in the supply chain. Without consistent regulation of the transportation and storage process, it’s often impossible to trust the purity of drugs once they’re delivered to the patient. Dr. Zaman has dedicated much of his time to the development of PharmaCheck, a platform for drug efficacy testing. You can read more about PharmaCheck on BU’s biomedical engineering page or here, on the site for Dr. Zaman’s Lab for Engineering Education and Development.
Getting Started in the Lab
Now that we have all had time to settle back into the swing of school, we are really hitting the ground running. As we are about to start experimenting in the lab within the next few weeks, we are taking measures to ensure that we have a complete understanding of existing technologies, both in Zanzibar and here in the States. We are creating a survey which will consist of our remaining questions for the doctors, nurses, and lab technicians who have helped us throughout our research. With results from this survey we will have the final information necessary to get started with experiments in the lab.
Sara is getting started on our research paper. The paper will be submitted to the WHO Bulletin and will be based on our findings in Zanzibar. More specifically, it will examine technology gaps in Zanzibar specific to the health system, Zanzibari culture, and existing technology. Sara is currently working on a very in-depth outline that will ensure overall organization.
For those of you have been interested in our blog throughout our travels and research, please visit us next Wednesday, September 30th in 44 Cummington Mall Room 203 at 5pm for an informational session. This is a great opportunity for you to learn more about the program and also find out how to apply if you would like to become a part of our team.
Back in Boston
We’re excited to be back in Boston and getting to work in the lab. This week we determined what our device focus will be: a renal and kidney function test that will help diagnose severe cases of pre-eclampsia. Currently, sophisticated testing for liver and kidney function – specifically blood tests – is expensive and widely unavailable in Zanzibar. We still have a lot of research to do to gain an understanding of the existing technology, but we already have some thoughts on what we’ll need to keep in mind when designing our device.
First we'll have to decide whether we would like to develop a urine test or a blood test. The main advantage of a blood test is that it can detect many biomarkers and important enzymes that simply aren’t represented in the urine. However, existing blood tests are costly, and the results often take hours to develop, so the patient most likely won’t get their results until the next day. We would like to focus on a point of care test that could give the patient their results hopefully within minutes, not hours or days. Two of the technologies we’ll be investigating in the coming week are microfluidic and lateral flow test strips. Paper-based microfluidic devices consist of hydrophilic paper channels defined by patterns of hydrophobic barriers or cuts. This directs fluid flow toward detection zones, which perform operations on the liquid and can display results. Chemically treated test strips offer a good solution for simple medical devices in developing countries because by design they are usually portable and cost efficient.
