ABSTRACT
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have attracted tremendous interest in recent years. The miniaturization of devices containing traditional electrical and mechanical components to the micro and meso scales has revolutionized technology and opened up new directions in areas such as chemistry and biology. Microfabrication techniques and MEMS devices started as a tool for the semiconductor industry and have developed into one of the most significant technological advances of the past century. In the past few years, microfabrication concepts have proven successful in creating a variety of diagnostic and therapeutic devices, e.g., lab-on-a-chip systems, microelectrodes, surgical devices, cardiovascular stents, and so on. Collectively, efforts to integrate microfabrication concepts into solving biological and medical problems have been termed BioMEMS. These techniques have been widely studied in various areas of biology and medicine including cellular manipulations, biomaterials, tissue engineering, drug delivery, and so on, and have shown exciting promise. It is at this juncture that we will try to evaluate the prospect of BioMEMS for use in gene therapy applications. Although the use of MEMS in gene delivery is somewhat analogous to that of drug delivery, there are some fundamental differences which must be addressed before applying MEMS-based drug delivery ideas for gene therapy applications. In this chapter we will
address the applicability of BioMEMS to drug and gene therapy and provide current concepts and future directions in the field. The reader should keep in mind that only limited research has been done in the specific area of gene delivery using microfabrication, but enough relevant concepts have been evaluated for us to gain basic insights into the promise of BioMEMS for gene therapy.
