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Original Publication Date
2025
Document Type
Presentation
Abstract
Propofol is one of the most widely used anesthetic drugs, capable of inducing sleep within seconds. However, its safe dosage range is extremely narrow—too little can cause patients to wake during surgery, while too much can lead to dangerously low blood pressure or respiratory failure. Current monitoring methods for propofol levels are expensive, slow, and require specialized equipment, making them impractical in surgical settings. Simona Clement’s research introduces a simpler, real-time sensing platform using a biphasic system composed of two immiscible liquids: an oil phase containing sensing reagents and an aqueous phase of patient blood. As propofol diffuses into the oil, its concentration is indicated by a visible color change—the darker the oil, the higher the drug level. By integrating this system with microfluidic channels and optical detection, Clement successfully monitored propofol levels continuously for four hours in anesthetized rats. This innovative approach offers a low-cost, real-time monitoring solution that could enable anesthesiologists to precisely control dosage, ensuring safer surgeries and smoother recoveries.
Transcription
Our next competitor is Simona Clement, Biphasic Propofol Sensing in Whole Blood in the College of Humanities and Sciences. Their advisor is Dr. Xuewei Wang. Any surgery, the first medication that is administered into a patient's body is anesthesia. And the most commonly used anesthetic drug is propofol that puts the patient into sleep within seconds so that the patient doesn't feel any pain. Yes, we all know how an anesthesia works, But here is a concerning factor. While propofol is a fast and reliable drug, the window in which it works safely is very narrow. This means that to low levels of propofol, that can make the patient wake up in the middle of the surgery and the patient might start to feel the pain. To high levels, that's fatal too. That can dangerously drop the blood pressure of the patient and can even slow down the breathing. So if we think about the solutions, are there any solutions? Yes, indeed there are. But all these solutions are expensive, time-consuming, and needs specialized instruments, which is not very ideal for a surgery room setup. So I was thinking of a simpler solution, and that's where my research comes in. I envisioned a biphasic sensing platform. This means that I have two completely immiscible phases, an oil phase and an aqueous phase. The aqueous phase is nothing but the blood of the patient that is drawn continuously using an arterial catheter. And the oil phase has some reagents doped in it that can actually sense the amount of propofol that is present at a given time point. So we just rely on the color that we see in the oil rather than relying on the blood because we know that blood is bright red in color, right? So we don't see any color in blood, but we depend on the oil phase, which means that darker the color of the oil, more is the propofol that is present. Now, I thought of taking this to the next level. That is, I thought of connecting this chemistry with a more complicated platform. That is microfluidics. Don't worry about the jargon. It's just this picture on the top right corner. It's just how teeny tiny droplets of aqueous and oil phase flow together through a channel. As they mix together, we see the color change at the end of the channel. We couple this channel with an optical detector that can actually measure the colorimetric response and convert that into the levels of propofol at a given time point. We were also successfully able to measure propofol over a time period of four hours in an anesthetized rat. this means that with this method anesthetists don't have to worry to get this drug in the right range because we got it we would just monitor it continuously no matter what so my friends this means that two liquids working together to achieve one great goal smarter surgery smoother recoveries and better patient outcomes. Thank you.
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575362013 - 1_1hq69c0p - PID 1888231.txt (2 kB)
Transcription
Comments
11th Annual VCU 3MT® Competition, held on October 3, 2025.