Peristaltic multistage micro-mechanical pump for next generation diabetes management
More than 30 million people are living with diabetes in the EU, with a prevalence expected to grow to over 10% of the adult population by the year 2030. Despite modern treatments, the life expectancy of patients with type 1 diabetes remains reduced as compared to healthy people due to lack of efficient therapies. An “artificial pancreas” is the ultimate solution for such therapy: a device performing a continuous glucose measurement and pumping precise doses of insulin and other hormones needed for the treatment. The closed-loop artificial pancreases promises an agile solution where the diabetes patients may effectively feel relieved from their disease as the blood glucose level is automatically controlled using a mixture of multiple hormones simultaneously. Such an innovative technology alleviates the burden of carbohydrate counting and automatically ensuring the optimal glucose level at all times. However, a small, lightweight device which is able to administrate multiple hormones is still lacking. This proposal seeks to develop a novel micro-peristaltic pump on silicon, to be integrated with a transdermal smart patch loaded with the three hormones delivered by silicon microneedles. The PRISMA innovation is possible thanks to the achievements of the FET-OPEN project “BioWings”, where the concept of thin-film micropump using actuating materials has been prototyped.