Drexel opens new institute to study plasma

philadelphia.bizjournals.com ^ | 08/07/08 | Peter Key

[Red Badger]

Professor Gary Friedman (left) and Alex Fridman, director of the Drexel Plasma Institute, demonstrate a plasma generator being tested for use in medicine.

A few years ago, a researcher at Drexel University accidentally cut his finger and exposed it to plasma, a fourth state of matter created by ionizing gas.

To everyone’s surprise, the blood from the cut coagulated.

“We said, ‘OK, this is very interesting, maybe we can help somebody with this,’” said Gary Friedman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a professor of surgery at Drexel, who was working with the researcher at the time.

It proved interesting to Plasma Technologies Inc. The Corpus Christi, Texas-based company recently licensed plasma technology developed at Drexel to use in a medical device that its president, Bert Quintanilla, thinks it can bring to market overseas within a year.

“The technology is incredible because it coagulates blood within 15 seconds of applying the technology to the human body and it does that with no burns, with no cauterization to the wound,” Quintanilla said.

Drexel is working to develop other plasma technologies, too.

The university last year approved a research initiative in plasma medicine and biology and recently established the A.J. Drexel Plasma Institute, which joins the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute as a focal point for interdisciplinary research at Drexel.

The initiative involves a commitment by Drexel to add faculty and research associates who can investigate medicinal and biological applications for plasma. Among other things, it resulted in Drexel hosting the First International Conference on Plasma Medicine in Corpus Christi last year.

The institute will also investigate other possible applications of plasma technology, such as fuel and energy conversion, environmental control, plasma-assisted combustion and flight control.

Although it has unusual properties, plasma is common. Stars consist of plasma, as do lightning and static electricity.

“Anytime you walk on a carpet in dry air, you will often then bring your body to some other sharp point and you will feel this unpleasant discharge — that’s plasma,” Friedman said.

Although the plasma in lightning and stars is hot, plasma can also be cold, as is the case with the plasma in TV and fluorescent lamps. Research into cold plasma, also called nonthermal plasma, is the institute’s specialty.

Plasma is already used for many applications, including semiconductor manufacturing and coloring synthetic fibers.

“Almost all synthetic clothing, before it’s painted, it’s put through plasma, so that the paint can actually stick to the synthetic material,” Friedman said.

In addition to medical applications, researchers associated with the plasma institute are looking into using it to help extract hydrogen out of fuels so that the hydrogen can be used in fuel cells used in cars.

“The advantage is you don’t need to store hydrogen somewhere” in the car, Friedman said.

The research that led to the technology that Plasma Technologies is licensing was jump-started by a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which also wanted Drexel to look into using plasma to disinfect wounds.

That’s important to the military because the improvised explosive devices used against soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are usually very dirty, so even a small wound can trigger fatal infections.

It’s also important to hospitals because disinfectants such as alcohol and iodine can’t be poured into open wounds because doing so would kill too much living tissue.

Drexel has also gotten funding from the Miami-based Walter H. Coulter Foundation to help commercialize its technology.

Friedman said he and his fellow researchers have found they can “tune” plasma to kill bacteria but not harm the tissue around the bacteria.

“It kills bacteria within five seconds of exposure, but living tissue is absolutely fine,” he said.

So far, Friedman said, Drexel researchers have tested using plasma on bacteria in pigs and mice.

“We are hoping that we will move to human trials soon, but we still need to generate a little more animal data to be sure that this is working well,” he said.

Drexel also has obtained funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which wants to make sure that if astronauts ever set foot on another planet, it has the technology to kill any bacteria they might inadvertently bring back to Earth.

The university also has gotten funding for using plasma to kill bacteria from the Department of Transportation and from the Food and Drug Administration, which wants to know if plasma can kill bacteria on food without harming the food.

The results look promising. Drexel researchers have shown they can generate plasma inside a sealed envelope that can kill plasma spores in the envelope.

They also have found that plasma can be used to kill E. coli and the bacteria that cause staph infections. It even can be used to kill a type of bacteria that is so hardy that it survives in radioactive areas of nuclear power plants.

“We show that with our plasma technology, we can deactivate this bacteria within 10 seconds of exposure,” Friedman said. 

[trisham]

Cool. Thanks for the ping!

[SunkenCiv]

Gary Friedman and Alex Fridman. Thanks neverdem.