Medical Design Briefs - November 2023 - 22

Pioneering the Future of Healthcare: Meet the Trailblazing
2023 Medical Finalist and Honorable Mentions
T
he 21st annual " Create the Future " Design Contest for engineers, students, and entrepreneurs worldwide, sponsored by
COMSOL, Inc., and Mouser Electronics, drew more than 500 innovative product ideas from engineers and students in
from 60 countries from around the world. The Medical category itself received 54 innovative entries from 22 countries.
Analog Devices and Intel were supporting sponsors, and Zeus sponsored the Medical category. The contest, which was established
in 2002, recognizes and rewards engineering innovations that benefit humanity, the environment, and the economy.
Finalists were selected from the seven categories: Aerospace & Defense, Automotive/Transportation, Consumer Product Design,
Electronics/Sensors/IoT, Manufacturing/Robotics/Automation, Medical, and Sustainable Technologies/Future Energy.
In addition to product ideas at the concept or prototype stage, contestants could submit designs for commercial products introduced
to the market within the last 12 months.
A competition among the finalists from all categories took place November 10, at which the grand prize winner was selected by a
panel of judges. The grand prize winner received $25,000, while the first-place winner in each category received a Hewlett-Packard
workstation computer. This article introduces the Medical Category finalist as well as those who received honorable mention. Congratulations
to all who entered. All of the entries can be seen at http://contest.techbriefs.com/2023/entries/all.
A New Treatment Approach
for Spinal Cord Injury
Johannes Dapprich
Elaine Brock
Jay Trautman
Jason Puchalla
Eve Tsai
William S Brown
Neuropair, Inc., Princeton, NJ
otivation. Spinal cord injury (SCI) afflicts 17,000 Americans
and 700,000 people worldwide each year. Prognoses
are often tragic, and social costs exceed $2 million (US and
EU) in the first five years of care. For decades, the dream of
repairing the spinal cord has been elusive. Recent studies, however,
show that new axonal growth and formation of functional
circuits are possible under the right conditions: a favorable biophysical
environment in direct contact with surviving nerve
endings. Chances for recovery increase greatly if such an environment
can be provided rapidly after injury.
NeuroPair's fast and minimally invasive approach generates
an injectable scaffold of aligned magnetic nanoparticles to create
conditions for protecting, healing, and regrowing neurons
22
M
rare earth
magnets
that were damaged during SCI. The scaffold guides the direction
of neuronal regrowth and may help enable recovery from SCI.
Because shape and condition of SCIs vary so much, one-sizefits-all
approaches are very unlikely to succeed. NeuroPair's injectable
hydrogel formulation addresses these needs by perfectly
filling any irregular shape of the injury site, generating a
flexible fiber scaffold with cellular contact for neuronal regeneration
within minutes, suppressing scar formation, and being
Fig. 1a
temporary
magnetic field
across injury site
generates fiber
scaffold
Fig. 1b
B
A
A
10 µm
Two separate neuronal extensions (A)
from two N1E-115 cells (B) following
the direction of fiberguide bundles.
(only one cell body B is visible)
Fig. 1 - The magnetic field (a) assembles the particles into a non-toxic and biodegradable
scaffold (b).
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Medical Design Briefs, November 2023
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Medical Design Briefs - November 2023

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