A course in prosthetics for the developing world: Merging education, research, and industry to teach biomedical design for social impact.

Under the auspices of the MIT D-Lab, a team of graduate students has instructed a course since 2008 that centers around teaching low-cost prosthetic design for resource-constrained environments. Recently, the course has evolved into a fully immersive design experience that pairs student teams with real-life international stakeholders and industry partners. Following this structure, projects initiated as part of the course have been tested at field sites around the world, stimulated further research, advanced student careers, raised additional grant money, and generated peer-reviewed publications and intellectual property.

Ovarian cancer spheroid shrinkage following continuous exposure to cisplatin is a function of spheroid diameter.

Objective: Most ovarian cancer patients present with advanced-stage disease, disseminated in the peritoneal cavity. Standard treatment involves surgical resection of all visible tumor, followed by delivery of systemic therapy. Patients with advanced-stage disease may be candidates for intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy following surgical debulking.

Sustained, low-dose intraperitoneal cisplatin improves treatment outcome in ovarian cancer mouse models.

Intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy for ovarian cancer treatment prolongs overall survival by 16 months compared to intravenous chemotherapy but is not widely practiced due to catheter-related complications and complexity of administration. An implantable, nonresorbable IP microdevice was used to release chemotherapeutic agent at a constant rate of approximately 1.3 μg/h in vitro and 1.

Single compartment drug delivery.

Drug design is built on the concept that key molecular targets of disease are isolated in the diseased tissue. Systemic drug administration would be sufficient for targeting in such a case. It is, however, common for enzymes or receptors that are integral to disease to be structurally similar or identical to those that play important biological roles in normal tissues of the body.