Tissue Engineering: Boston University Pancreas, blood vessels or
other organ on the fritz? She'll build you a nifty replacement.
When Tejal Desai walked into professor Mauro Ferrari's office at
the University of California, Berkeley, she looked so young he
mistook her for an overeager high schooler and almost threw her
out. Undeterred, Desai told him she'd studied biomedical
engineering as an undergrad at Brown and was seeking a
challenging Ph.D. project. Ferrari assigned her a whopper: Build
an implantable device that will eliminate the daily insulin
injections diabetics give themselves to control blood sugar
levels. Desai's colleagues warned her the task was too hard,
that she'd never graduate. But after four years of coaxing cells
to grow on chemically modified silicon surfaces, Desai had it: a
microscopic device that, when implanted in diabetic rats,
delivered ongoing, regular doses of insulin. The device
functioned like a tiny tea strainer: A hollow bit of silicon
perforated with tiny holes, it was fille