This course will explore the principles, techniques, and applications for therapeutic drug delivery and administration. This course will start with the fundamentals of drug administration: engineering principles such as diffusion and mass transport, with specific emphasis on transport in biological systems and barriers, pharmacokinetics, and drug distribution. We will examine the existing state of art in drug delivery systems: controlled release, biomaterials, and polymer-based delivery systems. Finally, we will also discuss the current field of biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals: identification of novel drug targets, latest development in drug discovery, development, clinical trials, and product development, going from research to market using the latest examples from the pharmaceutical industry.

This course will explore the engineering principles behind advanced biomedical technologies and modern biotechnology. This course will examine in depth the engineering fundamentals used in the development of modern biotechnology. More specifically, we will discuss engineering and mathematical fundamentals used in microbial fermentations, enzyme kinetics, biological thermodynamics, genetic and recombinant engineering, and the production of monoclonal antibodies, and other biopharmaceuticals. Topics to be covered include: bioproducts and biofules, microbial fermentation and bioreactors, mathematical modeling and simulations of biological processes, enzyme kinetics, metabolic pathways and genetic engineering.

This course will introduce principles of thermodynamics, physical chemistry, and reaction kinetics in the context of biomolecular recognition. Advanced topics include principles and techniques to manipulate receptor-ligand recognition processes and cell-biomaterials interactions, as well as design and delivery of biomolecular and cellular therapeutics for disease treatment.

This course will cover biological principles and physiological phenomena underlying cellular regulation during development, homeostasis, and wound healing. Topics also include tissue engineering fundamentals, such as cell sources, transplantation immunology, processing of scaffolding materials, integration at cell-material interfaces, mechanisms of incorporation and release of biologics, engineered culture environments, and host-transplant integration. Students will have opportunity to evaluate clinically relevant tissue engineering products and cutting-edge tissue engineering research.

This course describes basic synthesis, characterization and applications of current synthetic and natural biocompatible polymers. This course is designed for undergraduate and graduate students in all areas who are interested in biomedical polymers, since polymers currently are so popular in biomedical, pharmaceutical and tissue engineering research. Topics include: overview of basic materials science, organic chemistry and biochemistry, introduction to polymers, biodegradable polymers, and polymeric hydrogels.

Prerequisite: General chemistry, organic chemistry, basic biology and “BME395 – Biomaterials” or materials science or special permission is required directly from course instructor.

This is an advanced polymer course that provides the most recent development of biomedical polymers and their applications and covers a variety of biomedical areas such as in cardiovascular, dental, orthopedic, ophthalmologic and wound healing research. Drug, cellular and gene delivery are also covered. This course is designed for all the senior undergraduate and graduate students (M.S. and Ph.D. level) in biomedical areas. Except for learning, students are also required to discuss the related topics and write term papers related to the assigned special topics in the class.

Prerequisite: “BME595 - Polymers for Biomedical Applications” is required for senior undergraduate students unless special permission is obtained from the course instructor.

This course will cover the biochemical signaling in response to various mechanical stresses in the context of physiology and pathophysiology. Topics include the behavior of live cells during cell motility, force generation, and interaction with the extracellular matrix; the advanced biomechanical testing tools used for in vitro characterization of living cells; mechanotransduction that converts mechanical forces into biochemical signaling.

This course will cover the mathematical preliminaries and theoretical framework to analyze the mechanics of soft biological tissues. Emphasis is placed on the application of continuum mechanics to the study of the arteries; the measurement and quantification of material properties and the calculation of vascular stresses.

This course will cover the principles of a number of characterization methods used to assess the quantity and quality of tissues.  These will include, but are not limited to: Atomic force microscopy, Indentation, mechanical testing (static and dynamic), Raman/FTIR, EM, Fluorescence, CT, Backscatter EM.

This course will cover topics relevant to skeletal biology including skeletal morphology, physiology, cell biology, embryonic development, adult osteogenesis, mineral homeostasis, tissue mechanics, mechanical adaptation, failure (fracture), fracture fixation, implants, implant mechanics and disease dynamics.

This course covers the experimental and computational tools useful to analyze biological molecules and molecular systems, potential applications of DNA/protein molecules for designing nano-scale motors, switches, and computers. The topics include electrophoresis, genome-wide molecular analysis, network analysis, DNA manipulations, protein interactions, and microfluidics.

This course is aimed at understanding the mechanical designs of cells with emphasis on the dynamics of cellular components such as biopolymers (DNA and proteins), two-dimensional and three-dimensional filament networks, and lipid membranes. The topics include entropic consideration and persistence length of biopolymers, energy distributions in network structures, dynamics of filaments and motor proteins, membrane stability and undulations, integration of cellular components, and mechanical design of cells.

This course will introduce the basic principles of cardiac generated bioelectricity and will be examined at the cellular, extracellular, and body surface levels. The generation of abnormal cardiac rhythms and the relevant electro-therapies will be emphasized. These include the principles of cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators as well as the tools used in cardiac ablation therapy, e.g., cardiac mapping and ablative energy sources. Modern signal processing methods applied to electrocardiography will also be presented. Prerequisite: BME 395, Biomedical Instrumentation, or equivalent.

This course provides both the theoretical and practical training necessary to understand the operational principles of voltage and current clamp instrumentation most often used in cellular neurophysiology. The application and capabilities of the instrumentation are presented relative to the fundamental principles of bioelectricity most often studied in cellular electrophysiological research including: current, voltage, charge, resistance, capacitance, impedance relative to the phospholipid bilayer and protein pore, elementary properties of ions in solution, the Nernst-Plank equation, subthreshold membrane phenomena, space clamp of membrane potential, electrotonic considerations, conduction of action potentials along axons and spread of membrane potential throughout cell body and dendrites. Additional topics include the origin and analysis of extracellular biopotentials. Course lectures progress from the practical aspects of extracellular recording techniques through to understanding fundamental principles of volume conduction and the effects these have upon the recorded biopotential signals. The course closes with the study of advanced topics of bioelectric phenomena including elementary field theory, the core conductor and lumped fiber source models.

The course begins with the basic principles of hypothesis formulation and testing. Lectures rapidly progress toward the statistical design of experiments and proper selection of laboratory instrumentation, techniques and methodologies for testing a particular hypothesis, i.e. all experimental instrumentation and methodologies impart limits upon data interpretation relative to the specific biological questions understudy. Practical examples are derived from areas of neuroscience and cardiovascular research and involve a diverse range of instrumentation and methodologies including in vivo, in situ and in vitro electrophysiology (intra and extracellular recordings, care and use of animals, etc.),  microscopy (optical, confocal, electron etc.) and fluorescent indicators (lipophilic dyes, antibody labeling, etc.) along with basic principles of noncontact in vivo imagining at the level of organ systems and cellular networks.  Class time will also be devoted to development of experimental protocols that involve animal and human subjects, biosafety issues and the review processes for protocol submission.

Engineering constraints surrounding the selection of a power source for an implantable system and in particular how the control of the target organ system impacts power plant design. The organ specific design of cochlear neuroprosthetics, functional neuromuscular stimulation systems and cardiac pacemakers are presented in detail as but three examples of technically mature implantable systems that have had broad clinical impact. For each, there is a brief introduction to the related anatomy, physiology and neurophysiology of the target organ system so that students may gain perspective on the functional limits of the artificial control of these organ systems. Several implantable systems presently in the early stages of bioengineering design or in the early stages of clinical trials are presented as state-of-the-art examples. Particular attention is given to practical bioengineering issues related to the ever expanding use of implantable biomedical sensors in order to provide real-time control of the implant and improved response to challenges to the homeostasis of organ system function. Issues related to ethical and regulatory considerations related to implantable system design including animal testing, human clinical trials and FDA premarket approval are also introduced.

The advent of the current generation of low cost, low power, electronically programmable embedded systems has enabled the development of a new generation of portable medical bioinstrumentation. However, implementation of such devices requires the integration of analog interfaces, analog to digital / digital to analog signal conversion, digital filtering and programming in the medical devices arena. These topics will be reinforced through the development of a embedded TI-MSP430 based biomedical device.

Prerequisites: BME222 or equivalent, BME395 or equivalent, Computer programming language, BME331 or equivalent.

Neural engineering is an emerging engineering discipline that combines the various disciplines of engineering with the biological, physical and material sciences to find the means to access, understand, manipulate, and perhaps enhance the nervous system and the information it contains. The aim of this course is to provide an introduction to the field of neural engineering and will start with the introduction of the neuron, the bioelectric phenomenon and the neural / electronic interface. These topics will be reinforced through hands on practical experiments using electrodes for stimulation and recording.

Prerequisite: BME222 or equivalent