Lecture: «GI Device Development in a few Movements»
Giovanni Traverso
MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, Brigham and Women?s Hospital - Harvard Medical School.
Research Affiliate at Koch Institute & Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Theater Room
Abstract
As noted by, Dr. C. Everett Koop the former US Surgeon General, “Drugs don’t work if people don’t take them.” Here we explore a series of novel technologies with the potential to enhance medication adherence ensuring patients do take their medication. Specifically we will review the development of novel technologies enabling the ultralong delivery of drugs on the order of weeks to months following a single oral administration event, as well as the rapid delivery of small molecules for the treatment of bowel inflammation and ingestible electronic systems enabling the monitoring of a broad array of physiologic and pathophysiologic signals.
About
Dr. Traverso is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Associate Physician in the Division of Gastroenterology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard Medical School. He received his BA from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK, and his PhD at Johns Hopkins University. He subsequently completed medical school at the University of Cambridge, internal medicine residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his gastroenterology fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital, both at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Traverso’s previous work focused on the development of novel molecular tests for the early detection of colon cancer. For his post-doctoral research he transitioned to the fields of chemical and biomedical engineering in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he developed a series of novel technologies for drug delivery as well as physiological sensing via the gastrointestinal tract.
Dr. Traverso’s work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Materials, Science Translational Medicine and Cancer Research. He has been the recipient of the Grand Prize of the Collegiate Inventors Competition, a Research Fellowship from Trinity College, and was named one of the most promising innovators under 35 by the MIT Tech Review’s TR 35.
Dr. Traverso continues to collaborate closely with Professor Langer and is a Research Affiliate at MIT. His current research program is focused on developing the next generation of drug delivery systems to enable efficient delivery of therapeutics through the gastrointestinal tract as well developing novel ingestible electronic devices for sensing a broad array of physiologic and pathophysiologic parameters. Additionally, Dr. Traverso continues his efforts towards the development of novel diagnostic tests that enable the early detection of cancer.