DOW-UAP-D136: Biosensors and BioMEMS - Insulin Pumps, Brain-Machine Interfaces and Labs on a Chip

Source file: DOW-UAP-D136_AAWSAP-DIRD-Biosensors-and-BioMEMS-A-Survey-of-the-Present-Field-March-31-2010.pdf Originating agency: Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Defense Warning Office, AAWSA Program Document type: Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), "Acquisition Threat Support" series; control number DIA-08-1003-020 Date: 31 March 2010; information cutoff date (ICOD): 1 December 2009 Classification: UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY (the FOUO caveat is struck through on every page; publicly released 2026) Page count: 45 VIRIN: 260918-D-D0360-1125 PURSUE Release: 6

Summary

DOW-UAP-D136 is a 45-page reference document prepared by the Acquisition Support Division (DWO-3) of the Defense Warning Office, Directorate for Analysis, DIA, under the AAWSAP program. The author's name is redacted and replaced with the label AAP Person 65, and the administrative note directs questions to AAP Person 1, the AAWSA Program Manager. Its control number, DIA-08-1003-020, continues the sequence of two papers issued the previous day: DOW-UAP-D134 (017) and DOW-UAP-D135 (018).

It is a survey of BioMEMS, "biomedical micro-electro-mechanical systems," and of biosensors: tiny medical devices usually made with the same photolithographic techniques used for computer chips. The paper is organized as a tour of applications: micromachines for brain electrodes, fluidic devices and drug pumps, implantable blood-chemistry sensors, glucose sensors, neuroengineering and brain-machine interfaces, retinal implants, neurostimulation, microfluidics and labs on a chip, and microcantilevers. It has 36 figures but no reference list; sources appear only in figure captions.

The author writes that several of the surveyed technologies "have been the subject of research by the present author and by colleagues at Arizona State University," and many of the examples do come from that university. The paper does not mention UFOs, UAP or unidentified aerial phenomena, and does not deal with aircraft.

Research Article

What BioMEMS is, and why small is different

The introduction is openly optimistic: "the notion of a bionic man is now becoming a reality," and today's implants, pacemakers, cochlear implants, insulin pumps, "will be seen as crude and cumbersome tomorrow." The author judges it "probable that within the next two decades" there will be as many microdevice-based treatments as there are pharmaceutical solutions today.

The opening chapter explains that physics changes at small scales: capillary, van der Waals and electric-field forces become relatively strong, and "in the realm of the very small, the force of gravity is far less important than electrical charge and viscosity." The author notes that BioMEMS "has become something of a misnomer," since many working parts are now nanoscale, and cites carbon nanostructures such as graphene and nanotubes, "much stronger than steel," for weight-bearing prosthetics and nearly frictionless bearings.

By the second page the author sets out the two obstacles that recur throughout: biocompatibility, meaning the device's effect on tissue and the effect of body fluids on the device, and regulation. "Bringing a new device to market is not unlike the development of a new drug," with clinical trials and Food and Drug Administration requirements.

A micromachine inside the brain

The first example is a micromachine developed jointly by Arizona State University (ASU) and Sandia National Laboratories. When a person intends to move, a microvolt signal from motor-cortex neurons appears about 120 milliseconds before the muscle moves, and it persists in paralyzed patients and amputees. The problem is that the body encapsulates electrodes in scar tissue, and they lose contact with the neurons. The solution is a tiny motor, an electrostatic comb drive vibrating at about 40 Hz on about 15 volts, which through a gear train (with features as small as 50 microns) moves the electrode by less than a millimeter at 1 to 2 mm per second. The device was made in Sandia's SUMMiT V five-layer polysilicon process, implanted in rats, and yielded single-unit recordings over three days, with support from the neuroprostheses program of the National Institutes of Health. The same chapter includes a paragraph on a "Neural Probe chip" with thermal microactuators, an 8.8-micron step and up to 5 mm of travel, which appears to describe a different device; the paper does not distinguish them.

Pumps, blood sensors and the unsolved problem

The fluidic chapter cites a Nexus Task Force forecast that the BioMEMS market "is expected to reach $18 Billion in 2005," a forecast still phrased in the future tense in a 2010 paper. A MEMS insulin pump (Figure 6) is described as implanted under the skin, with a rubber septum for refilling and a timer-driven piezoelectric element; the accompanying slide from the Swiss company Debiotech cites control of nanoliter volumes and 450,000 insulin-pump wearers worldwide. The author notes the pump could also deliver 5-fluorouracil for cancer and theophylline for asthma.

Next come implantable sensors. The author gives two definitions of a "biosensor": a sensor that measures quantities within a biological system, or a sensor that incorporates a biological component (enzymes, living cells, antibodies), the definition "prevalent in Europe." An ISFET pH sensor, a transistor with a silicon nitride gate, works for a few hours before adhering proteins shift its calibration, and "it is not known" exactly what happens at its membrane. An optical oxygen sensor uses a ruthenium coating that glows orange under blue light.

Here comes the paper's central admission: "So far, despite decades of work, no continuous monitoring sensor that is self contained and implantable has been successful for long term usage." The body is "an exceptionally hostile environment," and sensors fail within days or weeks, mostly through worn-out chemistry and immune attack rather than failure of the device materials.

Glucose sensors: from enzyme to heat

The most sought-after sensor is an implantable glucose sensor that could drive an insulin pump in a closed loop, "an artificial endocrine pancreas." Most sensors rely on the enzyme glucose oxidase, which converts glucose and oxygen into gluconolactone, hydrogen peroxide and heat (79 kJ/mole); electrical measurement of the peroxide suffers from "a drifting baseline." A commercial Advanced Biosensors device (Figure 11), 1 mm long and 200 microns wide, stays in place for 3 to 7 days.

The alternative developed at ASU measures the heat of the same reaction. At normal blood glucose levels the temperature rise is about 10 millidegrees, so the sensor uses a thermopile: thin films of antimony and bismuth forming dozens of junctions in series, exploiting the Seebeck effect in a differential measurement. It was built on a Mylar substrate, rolled into a tube in a catheter, and briefly implanted in a pig, where it recorded the fall in blood glucose after insulin was given (Figure 16). But here too the enzyme decays and the calibration drifts. "These problems have no easy solution," the author writes, adding that investigators have worked on blood-chemistry sensors "for forty years or more."

Brain-machine interfaces, retinas and neurostimulation

The neuroengineering chapters run from Galvani and Volta to electrode arrays: a 96-channel titanium array made by electrical discharge machining, less than a centimeter square, and a University of Utah array whose caption describes 1,141 electrodes (Figure 21). Clinical brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) "may require the activities of hundreds or thousands of neurons to be simultaneously sampled," yet overly dense arrays disrupt blood flow and tissue. Electrodes are made only of noble metals, platinum, iridium and gold, and to some extent tungsten. The measured verdict: "Crude forms of these thought-controlled devices have been shown in research laboratories to be feasible, even if they are at present not practical."

Retinal implants (Figures 24 to 27) convert a camera image into electrical pulses that evoke "phosphenes," points of perceived light; the main example is the Boston Retinal Implant Project, powered by magnetic induction, where coil size sets the implant's minimum size. In neurostimulation, pacemaker batteries must be replaced about every seven years, so ASU developed a 0.9 by 1.2 mm stimulator that passes through a syringe needle and is powered by ultrasound at about 1 MHz, using a stack of 25-micron sheets of the piezoelectric polymer PVDF. It was implanted in rats and found effective. (The text first says such devices derive their power "by a process of induction," while the device itself is ultrasound-powered.)

Labs on a chip, cultures in space and cantilevers

Glass microfluidic systems move nanoliters and even picoliters; labs on a chip from companies such as Caliper, Nanogen and Agilent replace gel electrophoresis and cut per-sample analysis cost by a factor of ten. For NASA, ASU developed an automated cell-culture system working in volumes under a milliliter, with pumps, valves and glucose, oxygen and pH sensors, holding E. coli bacteria engineered by microbiologist Valerie Stout to glow when the rec-A gene is active, a sign of damage from the space environment. The paper notes that space flight "actually makes some bacteria more dangerous."

The last chapter covers microcantilevers: tiny beams that bend, or whose resonant frequency drops, when a molecule binds to them, like "a tuning fork that changes its pitch when touched." A cantilever about one micron wide and 10 microns long detected a single vaccinia virus particle, and antibody-coated cantilever arrays are being developed for cancer diagnostics. The one-page conclusion looks ahead to NEMS, nanomechanical systems, and states: "This field is expanding rapidly."

What the paper does not say

The paper does not mention UFOs, UAP, aircraft or foreign technology, and proposes no aerospace application. Among AAWSAP's 12 technical areas it fits "human interface" (brain-machine interfaces, thought control of machines) and "human effects" (physiological monitoring), and the supporting-topics category. Its only defense connection is a sentence on soldier readiness: an exhausted soldier shows acidic blood pH, below about 7.3, and "remote electronic readout of biosensor information of a soldier to a central command center is presently the stuff of science fiction movies but reflects real desires of the military." NASA appears in the context of astronaut monitoring and space cell cultures.

This is a survey at the level of a university introduction, not original research. It has no reference list, and figure captions cite, among others, Wikipedia, a Brown University course website and manufacturers' slides, some dating from 2003. It also contains loose medical phrasing, such as presenting ketoacidosis as "fainting." Its time horizons amount to "the next two decades" and technologies "likely to appear in the next few years."

Significance

The paper's value to a UAP researcher is limited: it shows how broad AAWSAP's mandate was, extending to a survey of almost entirely civilian medical technology. As content, it is an honest snapshot of the field in 2010, above all of its persistent failure to produce an implanted sensor that survives in the body. The score of 4 is kept: a detailed, well-grounded survey, but far from the program's core topics and from any connection to observations.

Key People

Locations

Key Concepts

Notable Quotes

"With the rapid pace of development, it is probable that within the next two decades we will have as many medical treatments based on microdevices as there are pharmaceutical solutions today." -- page 6

"In the realm of the very small, the force of gravity is far less important than electrical charge and viscosity." -- page 8

"Remote electronic readout of biosensor information of a soldier to a central command center is presently the stuff of science fiction movies but reflects real desires of the military." -- page 16

"So far, despite decades of work, no continuous monitoring sensor that is self contained and implantable has been successful for long term usage." -- page 19

"The human body is an exceptionally hostile environment for foreign materials." -- page 19

"These problems have no easy solution. Investigators have been working with various forms of blood chemistry sensors for forty years or more." -- page 25

"Crude forms of these thought-controlled devices have been shown in research laboratories to be feasible, even if they are at present not practical." -- page 29

"This field is expanding rapidly." -- page 45