UTARI Seminar is held the last Friday of each month at 12:00PM (noon). Each seminar highlights a different speaker who will discuss their latest research projects, cutting-edge technology or what is happening within certain technological industries. These industries include biomedical technologies or microsystems, assistive technologies, automation and intelligent systems, unmanned systems, advanced manufacturing and composite materials.
Speaker
Dr. Young-tae Kim, Associate Professor of Bioengineering of The University of Texas at Arlington and Associate Professor of Urology (Adjunct) at The UT Southwestern Medical Center
Topic
“Flexible Polymer MicroChannel Electrode Array (FlexmCEA) for Interfacing Small Nerves: Innovative tool for Bioelectronic Medicine”
Abstract
Bioelectronic medicine is a fast emerging field of developing medicines that use electrical impulses to precisely modulate the body’s neuronal circuits as an alternative to drug-enabled therapeutics. For example, Rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease causing chronic painful inflammation in major and minor joints as well as destroying the joints, can be effectively treated by vagus nerve stimulation. Instead of current therapies using anti-rheumatic drugs (i.e., reducing inflammation), the electrical stimulation to the patient’s vagus nerve can reduce the production of tumor necrosis factor from the spleen, leading to the significant decrease of the inflammatory derived pains from the joints.
However, current implantable devices for electrical stimulation are not designed for target specific nerve stimulation. For instance, electrodes that electrically activate the vagus nerve stimulate over 100,000 neuronal axons, which innervate many different internal organs from spleen to liver. It results in numerous unwanted side-effects.
To address this important need, our Bioelectronic Medicine Working Group (research scientists at UTARI and Bioengineering at UTA) have brought their diverse expertise in innovative electrode design and fabrication, reliable automated manufacture, neuroscience, and neuroengineering together to create a reliable, easy-to-implant/removal without nerve damage, and chronic implantable electrode device for modulating (e.g., recording, stimulating and blocking the neural activities) the small nerves. In this presentation, I will present our Working Group’s current research in Bioelectronic Medicine for treatment of hypertension using FlexmCEA for modulating small nerves.
Speaker Bio
Young-tae Kim received his Ph.D. degree in Bioengineering from the University of Utah in 2004 and worked at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2007. He is currently an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Texas at Arlington and an Associate Professor of Urology (Adjunct) at the UTSW Medical Center. His research interests include bioelectronic medicine, early cancer detection in the point-of-care manner, engineering enabled neuro-oncology, and high-throughput brain cancer drug screening.
Date
July 28, 2017
Time
12 noon – 1 p.m.
Where
UTARI
7300 Jack Newell Boulevard South
Fort Worth, TX 76118-7115
817-272-5900
utari.uta.edu
Free Admission/Lunch Provided