Issue 161 Item 3 New Pumpless Pump Targets Juvenile Diabetes Treatments

There is a new prototype treatment technology on the horizon, designed by Binghamton University chemistry professor C.J. Zhong. His “pumpless pump” could make insulin delivery and blood-sugar monitoring as easy as child’s play for the 13,000 children diagnosed each year with Type 1 diabetes. Binghamton University professor C.J. Zhong holds a chip scale model that, when 10 times smaller, may be implantable in diabetics. The device will take a blood sample, a sensor will check glucose levels, and a microchip will tell a pump how much insulin to deliver.
Zhong wants to miniaturize his pump to the size of a microchip. For now, though, it’s a prototype rectangle about 3 inches by 2 inches. Channels as wide as a hair would run along the surface drawing fluid in; an electric charge carried along platinum wires would cause the interface of organic and inorganic liquid to act like a piston, moving up and down as the polarity is changed.

There are no mechanical components, meaning it doesn’t need to be repaired, and it will never wear down or stop working, he said. Also, it uses just one to two volts of electricity — about as much as a watch battery.

Not only could a single pump deliver insulin, but it could monitor blood sugar as well, using much less blood than current monitoring techniques require. At microscopic levels, the pump would only need one picoliter of blood. A single droplet of water holds hundreds of millions of picoliters.

Depending on the blood sugar results, the pump could then signal the release of insulin, which would be stored outside the body and delivered by tube. Unlike conventional pumps, Zhong’s would only have to be implanted once.

Considered by many to be the most significant leap forward in diabetes management in the last two decades, insulin pumps give diabetics greater freedom while lessening the social isolation that can accompany the disease.

An easier option might one day be Zhong’s implanted pump. An analytical and materials chemist at heart, Zhong developed the pump as a way to test minute samples of material. Diabetes didn’t enter his mind.

Zhong’s pump is years away from making it to pharmacy shelves. Zhong has to find funding to further the research, and even if it proves viable, the pump faces years of clinical testing.

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