Credit score:
©Robert Rathe
Earlier than she was the director of NIST, Laurie E. Locascio invented supplies that make us more healthy.
One space of focus for her analysis was microfluidics. Microfluidics — the science of shifting liquids by means of small areas — is a crucial a part of medical remedy and vaccine improvement. The units Locascio and her colleagues created helped pave the best way for the analysis that introduced us the COVID-19 vaccines (and plenty of different vaccines which are presently in improvement).
Locascio additionally helped invent new approaches to medication and vaccines utilizing lipid nanoparticles, that are fatty “envelopes” that may ship RNA or different medicines to our cells.
In honor of Nationwide Inventors Month, the Taking Measure weblog requested Locascio about her background as an inventor and what makes NIST a house for innovation.
How did you get into bioengineering? What did you’re keen on about it?
I bought into bioengineering circuitously. I used to be a chemistry main in school, and I began taking some biology and biochemistry programs. I fell in love with that side of chemistry, leaning extra towards the well being care space.
Once I was searching for a graduate faculty, I discovered there was a really new subject at the moment known as bioengineering. There have been solely a few graduate packages within the U.S. The College of Utah was growing the primary synthetic coronary heart. So, I made a decision to go there, and it was a very enjoyable subject I had by no means heard about earlier than as a result of it was so new.
I used to be employed at NIST proper after that. They have been seeking to rent some researchers in bioscience and bioengineering on the time, so I got here to NIST and began a program right here.
Are you able to describe a few of your innovations and their position in science and bioengineering?
I had a very prolific, fantastic, energetic and numerous group of researchers in my laboratory round 2000. There was a lot vitality and so many concepts. That’s when most of my innovations have been born, out of the collaboration with such an important group of individuals.
Credit score:
B. Hayes/NIST
One of many innovations with Wyatt Vreeland, Michael Gaitan, Andreas Jahn and Joseph Reiner was across the improvement and formulation of latest therapeutics utilizing lipid nanoparticles. So, it was a lipid nanoparticle formulation.
That turned out to be actually vital as a result of that’s how the COVID-19 vaccines have been created, utilizing that strategy to the formulation of these therapies. Among the early devices for making the COVID-19 vaccines have been primarily based on a few of the patents we had developed right here at NIST.
I additionally had plenty of early patents across the improvement of polymer microfluidics. Microfluidics was a really younger matter within the late Nineteen Nineties. Our group bought into microfluidics at a time after they have been largely being developed in silicon or glass.
We determined we have been going to make them cheaper and extra disposable as a result of the medical subject wanted inexpensive approaches to therapies. We began working within the subject of polymer microfluidics, and it actually took off. Loads of the early patents with David Ross, Tim Johnson, Michael Gaitan and plenty of others have been on the event of microfluidics. Right this moment, the most typical microfluidic units utilized in medication are made in polymers and never glass. We have been one of many first to try this.
What’s the invention you’re most pleased with?
I’ve 12 patents, they usually’re all my favorites for various causes.
Along with the lipid microfluidics formulation, one other invention I labored on was finding out chemotaxis with Javier Atencia. That’s principally finding out the migration of dwelling cells towards a chemical attractant. Javier spun off an organization primarily based on these patents. The know-how seems for the presence of micro organism in meals. That was additionally a very thrilling time in my profession.
I feel a few of the very elementary research of chemical separations in microfluidic techniques with David Ross have been enjoyable tasks, too.
What are a few of your favourite components of the invention course of?
I really like being an inventor! It feeds my soul. The concept is that you simply sit in a room and brainstorm with a bunch of supersmart people who find themselves all working towards determining what the following nice concept is. That’s a lot enjoyable.
The laborious half is making an attempt to make it occur within the laboratory. That takes plenty of perseverance. If you lastly get right here, and also you assume, “I feel we’ve figured this one out.” These are nice moments. The primary brainstorming after which the last word “we did it” second are the 2 fantastic components of being an inventor.
NIST Director Laurie E. Locascio on Being a Bench Scientist at NIST
NIST is dwelling to plenty of inventors. What makes this group so supportive of innovation?
I feel we have now a few of the smartest, most artistic researchers right here that I’ve ever met.
If you’re in academia, you need to write proposals to feed your analysis. Right here, our specialists have most of that analysis funding constructed into our funds, and that hopefully provides them some freedom to discover, to paint outdoors the traces, to assume creatively.
How did being an inventor affect you?
These artistic years when most of my innovations have been born have been a few of the most enjoyable and thrilling occasions of my life.
Years later, I nonetheless have a operating listing on my telephone of invention concepts that I provide you with. In the future, I’ll make a few of these concepts occur. If I’m driving, I could get an concept about visitors lights or methods to make a greater canine leash. I feel consistently about what I can create.
Once I was inventing within the lab, I bought educated to consider what would make individuals’s lives higher. How can I create one thing to repair that drawback? My mind continues to work that strategy to at the present time.
What recommendation would you give to aspiring inventors?
Encompass your self with actually good individuals. The extra you collaborate, the extra good concepts will come into your mind. Listening to your individual analysis from different individuals’s views can actually make you begin to assume in a different way. And speak to individuals in numerous disciplines. Allow them to open up your thoughts to new concepts.
