On January 6, Assistant Professor Nguyen Duc Thanh, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the Institute of Materials Science at the University of Connecticut, gave a presentation entitled: “Smart biodegradable polymer at small scales for biomedical applications”, to lecturers and students from the DTU School of Medicine and Pharmacy. Professor Thanh is currently a member of the DTU Board of Trustees and regularly organizes events to network with Health Sciences lecturers and students to provide specialized information and broaden their knowledge.
Professor Thanh graduated in Physics from the Hanoi University of Science & Technology and went on to receive a PhD scholarship to study at Princeton University, awarded by the US Vietnam Education Fund (VEF). He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and currently heads a research team at the University of Connecticut. His projects are highly interdisciplinary, involving the fields of biomedicine, the specialized materials and procedures, and small-scale nanotechnology.
Professor Nguyen Duc Thanh
Professor Thanh invented the 3D platform manufacturing technology, named the StampEd Assembly of Polymer Layers (SEAL), and created self-enhancing vaccines that combine the effects of multiple shots into one.
His research group recently extended the SEAL method by creating a microneedle patch, similar a nicotine patch, which provides a stable vaccine which is equivalent to multiple doses of various pathogens, such as S. pneumoniae or Covid-19. His team has also investigated the use of a new biodegradable piezoelectric polymer to monitor important physiological forces, promote tissue growth and deliver drugs across the body’s physiological barriers.
His studies have been published in the world’s leading specialized scientific journals: Science, Nature Nanotech, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Biomedical Engineering, PNAS, Advanced Materials, etc. and reported on by The New York Times, The Guardian, the BBC, and others. Professor Thanh has won many prestigious awards, such as the Trailblazer Award for young and early investigators of the US National Institutes of Health, which was one of only eighteen Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer awards presented by the American Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). MIT also selected him as one of the top ten Asia-Pacific innovators in the under 35 category.
DTU lecturers and students with Professor Thanh (fifth from left)
Professor Thanh presented details on the specialized fields he lectures in, including regenerative medicine, absorbable materials, biomedical technology and medical applications, especially on the technology used to convert medical materials into smart materials and the way to create special nano and micro scaled structures for different applications in medicine and biology.
Professor Duc Thanh and his co-workers have developed innovative and practical projects and inventions that are now in great demand in the US and elsewhere, such as biodegradable and reusable face masks, patches which are similar to sterile compresses that simply administer vaccines without injections, as well as self-dissolving electronic sensor materials and so on.
Finally, Professor Thanh answered questions from the DTU lecturers and students about testing times, the actual penetration time of the vaccine, the safety and effectiveness of the self-dissolving piezoelectric polymer membranes in humans, vaccine patches to replace needles, and biodegradable face masks.
“Covid-19 had a devastating impact on all our lives, but proved that biomedicine can help millions of people around the world,” said Professor Thanh. “During the pandemic, users bought and hoarded surgical face masks, leading to shortages and huge amounts non-degradable, environmentally unfriendly waste. Meanwhile, poorer countries had no early access to vaccines. We anticipate that our research will help bring vaccines to remote places with poor storage and preservation facilities and reduce unnecessary waste.”
Professor Thanh’s visit enabled DTU lecturers and students to meet an expert in applied biomedical research and learn about some of the latest unique developments and achievements in the field of Medicine.
(Media Center)