Collaborative Efforts

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By Murray Hunter

With each passing year, acute diseases are receiving more attention from the health-care community and have a higher chance of successfully being tackled, resulting in a population that is living to a more advanced age. Attacking chronic disease is essential to maintaining good quality of life, and new hope is being brought by the visionary application of technology platforms to disease treatment.
The disease areas affected by this marriage of medical know-how and technological application are significant. One example is the prevalence of thigh pain after total hip replacement, which remains an unacceptable side-effect for some patients. This pain can be attributed to a number of factors, including implant-tissue interface reactions, unstable fibrous fixation, fatigue fracture and differences in the degree of elasticity for the prosthesis material and bone. A new approach combines technology with health-care expertise.
A collaborative research project — led by the National Research Council of Canada’s (NRC) Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute’s (IMTI) (London, ON) Ben Luan, PhD, a chemist and materials scientist and Dr. Cecil Rorabeck, an orthopaedic surgeon, both at the University of Western Ontario (London, ON) — was established to develop new materials with a biocompatible surface. This project proposes to develop a new platform technology for the design and fabrication of hip stems, incorporating two novel approaches: a new nanocomposite to improve biomechanical compatibility, and a new process for hydroxyapatite coating to enhance the biochemical compatibility (Figure 1).
The integration of these two features is expected to produce a new hip prosthesis with improved biomedical performance, including extended-life service.
Another chronic medical issue at the forefront is the treatment of neurological diseases such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease. These illnesses can significantly reduce quality of life and strain family relationships, and are likely the most significant debilitating physical issues facing the aging population.
In this instance, a microfabrication technology platform was developed by Suwas Nikumb, PhD, a specialist in precision fabrication and group leader of the NRC-IMTI’s Precision Fabrication Processes Research Group.
Nikumb’s neuromodulation electrode has the capacity to both record and stimulate, and can identify and potentially treat the focal cells causing the symptoms. Smaller in size than the tip of a pin, with up to 16 microelectrodes built in, this new device can be inserted into the brain without an open incision. This minimally invasive surgical method was developed with the neurological expertise of Dr. Mandar Jog, PhD, director of the Movement Disorders Program at the Movement Disorders Clinic (London, ON), who uncovered the initial need and undertook the device’s biological evaluation.
This collaboration of technology and medicine can reduce the effects and perhaps even treat neurological diseases by effectively pinpointing and eliminating abnormal cells.
Such advancements not only benefit seniors, but infants as well. With more babies surviving premature birth at earlier stages, more families face the considerable likelihood that their child may suffer from a neurological disorder. Early diagnosis and on-going monitoring of treatment are critical elements to improving this outcome. In order to achieve a correct diagnosis, a high-field MRI is needed to provide the required imaging resolution of the baby’s brain (Figure 2). However, developing the methods needed to achieve these images would require infant subjects to be exposed to hundreds of hours of MRI.
One solution being explored is the use of a tissue-mimicking phantom that can take the infants’ place. Gord Campbell, PhD, leader of the solid shaping processes research group at the NRC-IMTI, is using his expertise in creating hydrogel materials and working with medical physicists Neil Gelman, PhD of the Lawson Health Research Institute (London, ON) and Gerald Moran, PhD of McMaster University (Hamilton, ON) to identify a suitable combination of materials and morphology.
Together, their work promises to generate methods that will provide the accurate image needed for neonatologists to diagnose conditions and adjust treatment. With this, many neurological deficits in children can be reduced or avoided through timely action.
In all three areas — hip transplants, Parkinson’s disease and neonatal brain deficit diagnosis — combining technology and medicine is leading to new knowledge, new products and new patient treatments. What makes this approach successful is having multiple partners — in these cases, health-care professionals and scientists who are technology specialists — work together, within the context of scientific and health-care research centres, and with the support of funding agencies.
Researchers involved in the above-mentioned projects are located at various universities and research centres in southwestern Ontario, and are assisted by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Ottawa, ON). In this instance, geographical proximity, or clustering, provides a valuable basis for collaboration.
Translating these innovative technologies rests on the involvement of industry, which has the capacity to take new solutions to the marketplace. Medtrode Inc. (London, ON) and Multi Magnetics Inc. (London, ON) are assisting in this effort with the neuromodulation electrode and the neonatal brain phantom, respectively.

Murray Hunter is the senior communications officer for the NRC-IMTI, which focuses on innovative and strategic research, in collaboration with industrial, university and government partners.