Professor, Polytechnique Montréal, Canada
Director, NanoRobotics Laboratory at Polytechnique Montréal, Canada
21:00-21:45 Shanghai Time, July 7
Medical Robotics for Delivering Therapeutics
Abstract
This short presentation will present the main drawbacks of present cancer treatment modalities and the opportunities for medical robotics to enhance treatment outcomes. Two examples of platforms will be briefly described. The first platform relying on magnetic fields generated by a clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner enables the navigation and delivery of therapeutics through larger blood vessels whereas the second platform allows the guidance of self-propelled agents to deliver therapeutics deep in tumors. The presentation aims at showing that although the same principles of robotic platforms are applied, these platforms are different from traditional robotic platforms due to several factors imposed by the physiological microenvironments and technological constraints.
Biography
Professor Sylvain Martel is Director of the Nanorobotics Laboratory and Professor in the Department of Computer and Software Engineering and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, Campus of the University of Montréal, as well as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at McGill University. He holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Medical Nanorobotics, acts as Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Micro- Nanorobotics and Automation, and he is Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Fellow Engineers Canada as well as IEEE Fellow. He received many awards mostly in interdisciplinary research. While at the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at McGill University and later in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) prior to join Polytechnique Montréal, he developed several biomedical technologies including platforms for remote surgeries, cardiac mapping systems, and new types of brain implants for decoding neuronal activities in the motor cortex. Dr. Martel’s interdisciplinary research group is credited for the first demonstration of the controlled navigation of an untethered object in the blood vessel of a living animal. Since 2001, Prof. Martel’s research focus on developing new technologies for cancer therapy that enable the delivery of therapeutics directly to active cancer cells to maximize the therapeutic outcomes while minimizing toxicity for the patients. Prof. Martel is recognized worldwide as a pioneered and leading authority in the development of navigable therapeutic agents and novel interventional platforms for cancer therapy.