Carle Illinois College of Medicine student Mahima Goel has been awarded the prestigious Fiddler Innovation Fellowship for her work to develop a new portable device to prevent chemotherapy-induced hair loss in cancer patients. The fellowship includes a $10,000 prize that Goel plans to use to support her team’s efforts to improve the lives of cancer patients.
“This award is a testament to the truly global impact of combining engineering with medicine and another step in the fight towards increasing funding and awareness around cancer supportive care,” Goel said.
Goel’s system, called CAPSLocks, is a portable and affordable version of existing FDA-approved technology called scalp-cooling. It works by having cancer patients wear a special frozen cap on their heads during chemotherapy infusion to trigger a reaction in the blood vessels that prevents chemotherapy molecules from reaching the patient’s hair follicles. During her clinical rotations at Carle Health’s Mills Breast Center, Goel had the idea to create a more patient-friendly device after hearing patients describe the bulk, cost, and movement restrictions that come with existing devices on the market.
Goel’s prototype of CAPSLocks is a first-of-its-kind portable, compact, and affordable scalp cooling system at less than half the size, weight, and cost of any other existing system currently on the market. CAPSLocks also includes some additional features such as a removable battery pack, an angled LCD screen display, and a special electrically inert coolant solution that allows for improved patient safety and ergonomics. These features and the proprietary design of the device allow patients to move around during the infusion and travel home after a chemotherapy infusion session while still being attached to their scalp cooling device. CAPSLock’s new portability could reduce the time the patient has to remain at the infusion center by one to two hours per session.
“This award will directly impact the progress of the CAPSLocks project as our interdisciplinary team (comprised of oncologists, UIUC MechSE faculty/students, and medical students) hopes to apply the funds towards furthering prototype development and continuing to test for optimal safety and efficacy parameters so that we can make scalp cooling an accessible reality for all cancer patients,” Goel said.
The Fiddler Innovation Fellowship is awarded by the Emerging Digital Research and Education in Arts Media (eDream) Institute at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) recognizing and supporting innovative students who address societal or global challenges using an interdisciplinary approach. The fellowship is part of a $2 million endowment from computer science alumnus Jerry Fiddler and his wife, Melissa Alden, to the University of Illinois.
Fiddler Innovation Fellowship and Illinois Innovation Award Finalists
Fellow CI MED students Jeffrey Lu and Christian Guerrero-Juarez were selected as finalists for the Fiddler Innovation Fellowship. As the founder of Ferritiva, Lu has developed a prototype strip that utilizes non-invasive biofluids such as urine for rapid at-home screening for iron deficiency, a common health problem among certain populations including young women, athletes, children, older adults, people on special diets like vegetarianism, and residents of low-income and underserved communities.
The Technology Entrepreneur Center in The Grainger College of Engineering also announced that two CI MED students were among the finalists for the campuswide Illinois Innovation Award, recognizing students for excellence in groundbreaking innovation or translational research that addresses real-world problems and has the potential to make a significant impact.
Tessabella Magliochetti was recognized for her work on maternal health innovation to outcomes for expectant mothers. Magliochetti has developed AmnioAlert, an at-home amniotic fluid detection system to provide a reliable indication of labor onset by detecting amniotic fluid leakage.
Bhargavee Gnanasambandam is addressing disparities in cervical cancer screening, especially among populations who are disproportionately affected by cervical cancer and have limited access to care. Gnanasambandam co-founded Cervicare, a rapid bedside screening test that uses biomarkers identified in the team’s research for accurate cervical cancer screening. The system is designed to be less invasive, more cost-effective, and less time-intensive than conventional pap tests.
Editor’s note:
The original version of this article by the Grainger College of Engineering/ Technology Entrepreneur Center can be found here.