Medical Microsystems and Enabling Technologies for Precision Medicine

微/纳米技术的进步正在迅速发展医疗设备技术。这种趋势促进了精准医疗的出现，这是一种针对个体患者的基因和其他特征量身定制的个性化医疗保健方法。带有嵌入式传感器和执行器的微系统，或微机电系统（MEMS），以其独特的能力，通过微创形式准确评估和靶向治疗局部病变，为这一新兴领域提供了一条有前途的道路。然而，当放置在体内时，MEMS（本质上是具有精致片上结构的平面硅芯片）在机械稳健性、与三维组织和神经的有效相互作用、远程供电和控制以及生物相容性等关键方面存在各种问题。需要突破性的方法来有效地应对这些挑战。本研究旨在充分发挥MEMS在智能植入物和外科器械的临床应用潜力，推动精准医疗的发展。为此，我们将寻求新的途径，通过利用非传统功能材料和微/纳米级制造技术，以高度小型化、可植入和坚固的形式构建传感器和封装系统。重点将放在刺激响应材料上，以实现微纳米领域的自主“智能”驱动和传感。这条路线如果成功，将带来一石三鸟的解决方案，通过响应特性实现主动/感知功能，通过极其简单的设计架构实现最终的小型化，并通过相同的设计特性实现高鲁棒性/可靠性，从而将医疗MEMS变为现实。本研究的短期目标之一是研究和展示由刺激响应和纳米级材料功能化的新型微/纳米传感器，用于其体内和无线操作。然后，我们将通过将这些传感器应用于革命性微系统的开发来评估和验证这些传感器的实用性，包括药物输送植入物和智能导管，这些微系统将推进心血管疾病和癌症等局部疾病的精确治疗和诊断。替代的微/纳米制造工艺将作为这些设备的关键使能技术，也将在本研究中进行调查。从长远来看，我们希望我们的研究能够提供突破性的医疗微系统技术和产品，这将使加拿大和全世界的医疗保健更加有效，从而塑造微创精准医疗的未来。我们还设想，这项研究的新发现和发展将在医学领域以外的其他领域开创新的应用，广泛地促进微系统、纳米技术和应用物理学的进一步发展。

Advances in micro/nanotechnology are rapidly evolving medical device technologies. This trend is facilitating the advent of precision medicine, an approach to personalized healthcare tailored to genetic and other characteristics of individual patients. Microsystems with embedded sensors and actuators, or micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), offer a promising path to this emerging field, with their unique ability for accurate assessment and targeted treatment of local lesions through minimally invasive forms. When placed inside the body, MEMS, essentially planar silicon chips with delicate on-chip structures, however suffer a variety of issues in critical aspects including mechanical robustness, effective interaction with three-dimensional tissue and nerves, remote powering and control, and biocompatibility. Breakthrough approaches are needed to tackle these challenges effectively. This research is aimed to exert the full potential of MEMS for their clinical applications in intelligent implants and surgical devices that will push the advancement of precision medicine. To this end, we will seek novel routes to constructing transducers and packaged systems in highly miniaturized, implantable, and robust forms via leverage of nontraditional functional materials together with micro/nano-scale fabrication technology. A focus will be placed on stimuli-responsive materials to enable autonomous "smart" actuation and sensing in the micro and nano domains. This route, if successful, leads to a kill-three-birds-with-one-stone solution, achieving active/perceptive functions with the responsive feature, ultimate downsizing with their extremely simple design architectures, and high robustness/reliability led by the same design nature, all at once to bring medical MEMS into reality. One of the short-term objectives of this research is to study and demonstrate novel micro/nano transducers functionalized by stimuli-responsive and nano-scale materials for their in-vivo and wireless operations. We will then assess and verify the practicality of these transducers by applying them to the development of revolutionary microsystems including drug-delivery implants and smart catheters that will advance precision therapy and diagnosis of localized disease such as cardiovascular disease and cancers. Alternative micro/nanofabrication processes that will serve as a key enabling technology for these devices will also be investigated in this research. In the longer term, we expect our research to offer groundbreaking technologies and products of medical microsystems that will enable more effective healthcare in Canada and worldwide, and thereby shape the future of minimally invasive precision medicine. We also envision that the new findings and developments from this research will pioneer new applications in other areas beyond the particular scope in medical areas, broadly contributing to further advances in microsystems, nanotechnology, and applied physics.