Editorial Content Producer Oli Johnson speaks to Torramics CEO and Co-Founder Peter Garbuz and Nir Sade, GM, AM Division and SVP of Product at Nano Dimension about the nanoPatch automated drug delivery system, created utilising Nano's micro 3D printing technology.
Utilising technology developed at NASA, medical device start-up Torramics is developing the nanoPatch, an automated drug delivery system, which the company says is the world’s smallest and most precise drug delivery wearable device. The journey began when Co-Founder and CEO Peter Garbuz was working at the NASA Ames Research Park, he was working on propulsion systems for Martian aircraft. The technology was never efficient enough to fly according to Garbuz, but they recognised that because it is a compressor, it could be used for other applications, in particular for nanofluidic pumps.
Garbuz told MTI: “One of the main challenges wasn’t how you make it, that was actually kind of trivial. It’s pretty easy to make really small things, there’s loads of tools, one of the main challenges was actually after you make it. How do you test it? Because you need to be able to connect all the fluidics and it can’t leak. That set us off on a little journey to go and find the right partner. JDRF gave us $1.5 million, they put out a call for proposals for smaller insulin pumps and we managed to win that award.”
With the funding from the JDRF, Torramics says it was able to attract some of the top talent in the space that had expertise in semiconductors, such as a former VP of Production at Tesla, as well as an advisor that is a retired co-founder of a 15 billion-dollar company according to Garbuz.
Using micro 3D printing technology from Nano Dimension, Torramics was able to print the pump, and print things that would not be used in production, but the testable version of what they were looking at. The company says that this allowed them to quickly get data on it, which it says demonstrates that it is more than 10 times as precise as the best mechanical system. Part of the team that Garbuz put together also included a former PhD student from Stanford University who studied additive manufacturing.
Torramics
Nir Sade, GM, AM Division and SVP of Product at Nano Dimension told MTI: “What we are discovering is that micro additive manufacturing is a good tool for a lot of medical device components, primarily due to the miniaturisation trend in medical devices for surgeries, but also for medical device wearables. Torramics are doing exactly that, it’s a medical device that will be wearable and be small and comfortable for the user. Torramics is a combination of research, microfluidics, micro devices, wearables. It’s a great way to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology and it’s a wonderful application.”
Although the technology is inspired by work at NASA, there is no issues with intellectual property infringement or patents, due to the NASA Space Act Agreement which is designed to facilitate innovation says Garbuz: “This is the Bay Area, this is a place where there is over $14 trillion in market cap that did not exist 30 years ago. Part of what happens here is everybody tries to help new technologies go somewhere. The Bay Area is very different from other places. We were located on the NASA campus but we paid our own bills and everything else, but we collaborated with public servants and scientists at NASA.”
Torramics moved from a Fabrica Giga to a Fabrica Tera machine to try and achieve the goal of serial production.
Prior to adopting Nano Dimension’s micro 3D printing technology, Torramics said that it used a “design, fabricate, fixture, test, refixture, and test” cycle of creating a product, which it said was unreliable. Garbuz told MTI about how much the process has improved: “I don’t think it is possible to overstate how powerful it is to take small features, small parts and to be able to print it inside the test fixture that you’re then going to use to connect it to a device that is measuring the parameters that you’re interested in.
“A massive challenge working with small parts is what to do next right? So if you’re taking this to production, you develop a process that you dial in, that you get super precise on, and that allows you to integrate into a manufactured device. When you’re prototyping, those are one offs, and you can’t spend weeks developing that process each time something changes, because then that shuts down all of your iteration and innovation in making that small part.
“The device is actually really small, but in order to connect it to the outside world, and in order to be able to test it, we have to make it pretty big. What Nano Dimension allowed us to do is print the threads, then we were able to put four bolts and secure it together. There’s a lock and key, there’s a membrane that sits in between the two. This is instead of taking that very small part, that we were fixturing before which was leaking, because it’s hard to work with those parts, it’s a lot of work. It’s not reproducible. It’s an art and Nano Dimension helped to change that into a simple process where we could focus on iterating what mattered.”
