{"300091":{"#nid":"300091","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Special Delivery","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAndr\u00e9s Garc\u00eda\u2019s lab in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, which deals with really small-sized stuff may be onto something really big, and the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/jdrf.org\/\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EJuvenile Diabetes Research Foundation\u003C\/a\u003E (JDRF), who provided the funding for the groundbreaking study, is paying close attention.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.me.gatech.edu\/faculty\/garcia\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EAndr\u00e9s Garc\u00eda\u003C\/a\u003E, Regents\u2019 Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, spearheaded research that has the potential of improving the lives of millions of people, particularly people with diabetes.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMuch of the Garc\u00eda lab\u2019s research is focused on engineering hydrogels for the delivery of protein and cell therapies. In April, Garc\u00eda and a team of researchers in his lab published a research paper with the bulky title, \u201cMicrofluidic-Based Generation of Size-Controlled, Biofunctionalized Synthetic Polymer Microgels for Cell Encapsulation,\u201d in the journal \u003Cem\u003EAdvanced Materials.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe\u2019ve made a material that is really a hybrid, elements that are pure synthetic chemistry components, and other elements that are biological,\u201d says Garc\u00eda, who co-authored the paper with graduate research assistant Deavon Headen from the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Guillaume Aubry, a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CHBE), and Hang Lu, CHBE professor and James R. Fair Faculty Fellow.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe paper is getting a lot of attention among researchers, according to Garc\u00eda, \u201cand not just people who work in the cell encapsulation area, although some people in this area are very excited about it, and it\u2019s because this strategy shows the potential to have tremendous control in designing the properties of this encapsulation material, and it overcomes a lot of the limitations of the current materials people use. The precise control of this material is what people are excited about.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn essence, they\u2019ve designed a better way to deliver and protect therapeutic, life-saving cells to people with diabetes.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEvery day millions of Americans wake up with the sobering knowledge that they have type 1 diabetes (more than 200,000 of them under age 20), which means that their body\u2019s immune system has mistakenly declared open war on the pancreatic beta cells that make insulin, a hormone that is required in converting food to energy.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWithout insulin, glucose builds up to deadly levels in the bloodstream. So, millions of people (mostly people with type 1 diabetes, but some with type 2) give themselves daily insulin injections, or hook themselves up to an insulin pump, in order to stay alive.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere are alternatives \u2013 potentially more effective and less grueling treatments \u2013 emerging. One of the more exciting, designed to restore natural insulin production, is pancreatic islet transplantation \u2013 taking healthy islets (which are actually clusters of about 3,000 cells, including beta cells) from a donor pancreas and transplanting them into diabetes patients.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis replacement therapeutic process has shown terrific promise with some research demonstrating that transplanted islets can function for more than 12 years. But if the body\u2019s immune system detects foreign invaders, it responds aggressively, and may react harshly to these transplanted cells, forcing the need for immune suppression drugs.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECell encapsulation technologies are being developed to overcome this problem, called graft rejection (and to block the ongoing autoimmune attack of type 1 diabetes) in regenerative medicine. Basically, cells are encapsulated within a membrane that permits two-way diffusion, such as incoming molecules essential for cell metabolism, and outgoing waste products and therapeutic proteins, while the semi-permeability of the membrane keeps the body\u2019s immune system from destroying these benevolent foreign invaders (the encapsulated cells).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cEncapsulated cell therapies are a key research priority for JDRF because they hold broad promise of creating insulin independence for people with type 1 diabetes by physiologically regulating blood sugar levels with replacement cells,\u201d says Albert Hwa, senior program scientist for JDRF. \u201cThese therapies could move us beyond the limitations of islet transplantation by utilizing multiple cell sources and avoiding the risks and side effects of strong immune suppression therapies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cDr. Garcia\u2019s research improves the way hydrogel microcapsules are made and could be the foundation for next-generation cell replacement therapies. JDRF looks forward to additional testing with these novel capsules.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E-\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Andr\u00e9s Garc\u00eda\u2019s lab in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, which deals with really small-sized stuff may be onto something really big, a better way to deliver and protect therapeutic, life-saving cells to people with diab"}],"uid":"27863","created_gmt":"2014-05-29 10:35:33","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:16:29","author":"Christa Ernst","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-05-29T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2014-05-29T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"300061":{"id":"300061","type":"image","title":"Andres-Garcia JDiabetes","body":null,"created":"1449244552","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 15:55:52","changed":"1475895000","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:50:00","alt":"Andres-Garcia JDiabetes","file":{"fid":"199509","name":"andres-garcia_jdiabetes.png","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/andres-garcia_jdiabetes_0.png","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/andres-garcia_jdiabetes_0.png","mime":"image\/png","size":117592,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/andres-garcia_jdiabetes_0.png?itok=vbXn7pEK"}}},"media_ids":["300061"],"groups":[{"id":"1271","name":"NanoTECH"}],"categories":[{"id":"42941","name":"Art Research"},{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"},{"id":"149","name":"Nanotechnology and Nanoscience"}],"keywords":[{"id":"539","name":"Andres Garcia"},{"id":"94241","name":"diabetes treatments"},{"id":"12701","name":"Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology"},{"id":"12427","name":"microfluidics"},{"id":"6177","name":"microgels"},{"id":"94251","name":"polymer medicine"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"},{"id":"39451","name":"Electronics and Nanotechnology"},{"id":"39471","name":"Materials"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003E Parker H. Petit Institute\u003Cbr \/\u003E for Bioengineering \u0026amp; Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}