IITBHF and IITBAA (http://www.iitbombay.org)

She's trying to charm nerve cells to grow

by Priya Ganapati

Excerpts from article - the full text is in copies of India Abroad on the newsstand.

MIT's Technology Review magazine named Surya Mallapraga one of the top innovators for 2002. She has come up with a path-breaking alternative for treating peripheral nerve injuries. "Technology Review presents 100 innovators under 35 whose work and ideas will change the world" ... more.

Coaxing nerve cells to grow is a daunting task. For years, Surya Mallapragada, 29, Associate Professor at the department of chemical engineering, Iowa State University, has been trying to work out ways in which she can influence the growth of nerve cells. Finally, she devised biodegradable polymer scaffoldings that would guide cells to grow in a particular direction. It is much the same logic that vineyards use when they erect wooden frameworks to guide the growth of tendrils.

Simple as it may sound, Mallapragada's solution is path-breaking, especially if you consider that every year, over 200,000 peripheral nerve repairs are attempted on people suffering from nerve injuries, an affliction that complicates successful rehabilitation more than any other form of trauma.

Injuries to nerves can lead to formations of tangled abnormal masses of nerve fibers, which transmit spontaneous impulses that are realized as chronic pain. This tangled masses of nerve fibers cause major disability and is one of the most difficult conditions to treat. Till now, the standard approach to repair of severe injuries is the nerve auto-graft, where a segment of a nerve from another part of the body is removed and sewn in between the unattached ends at the injury site. But that means disability in the area where the nerve is plucked from and, of course, there is a limited pool to pick up from.

"There's partial denervation on both sides if you use a nerve auto-graft (piece of nerve from the own patient) from the patient to bridge a transection in a nerve due to injury or other reasons," explains Mallapragada.

And that is precisely what she hopes to avoid with the alternative that she is developing. The biodegradable polymer conduits that she has created need to have micro and nano-patterned grooves and special cells that ooze growth-inducing proteins that will provide a biological direction to the cells.

...

Mallapragada was born in Mumbai. She and her family moved to Chennai in southern India when she was seven. At school, her interest in chemistry grew. She later wrote the Joint Entrance Examination for the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. "My father was very interested in chemistry even though he had no formal education in it. We had quite a few chemistry books in the house and I always found the subject fascinating," she recalls.

Asked to choose between IIT Mumbai, which is reputed to have a better chemical engineering program and IIT Chennai, which was nearer home, Mallapragada decided to study in Mumbai. "My father was extremely supportive of this idea and felt that moving away from home will help me mature and become more independent, which it certainly did," she says.

In the early nineties when Mallapragada joined IIT, she was among the 17 female students in that year's batch of 300 students. Despite the sorority they created for themselves, she had to learn to cope in a highly male-oriented environment.

"Since all 17 of us were living in the same hostel, it was fun and we were a tight-knit group. We still keep in regular touch with each other. But at times, we felt a little left out because there were so few of us. And it was difficult to form study groups and networks that the male students could readily do," she recalls.

These handicaps did not deter her from having a great time on campus learning to swim, play the tabla and even learn karate. "All short-lived hobbies," she laughs, dismissing the best female student award that she won on the campus in 1993.

When she was offered a fellowship for graduate studies at Purdue and a chance to work with Professor Nicholas Peppas, a well-known name in chemical engineering, whose work in diffusion of polymers, matched her undergraduate research study, she decided to take it up.

At Purdue she also met her future husband Balaji Narasimham, who now works with her at the chemical department at Iowa State University. "We are colleagues at home and work. It is great as we brainstorm a lot and discuss ideas even at home. To me, it is very important to have a life partner who understands what you do and your work pressures since a good portion of my life is devoted to my work," she says.

When she took up a teaching position at Iowa State, the interest in nano-patterned surfaces piqued by her summer research project at IIT, made her want delve deeper into the subject. "I was familiar with the micro/nano patterning methods and with tissue engineering methods, due to my brief experiences at MIT and Rice University. I guess that led to my thoughts of putting both together to provide guidance at the cellular level," she says.

"We use biodegradable polymers as substrates as we do not want the polymer to remain in the body forever," she says. While the preliminary results on rats have been encouraging, it will be quite a while before doctors can adopt the procedure. But if she is successful, her research will change the way we treat nerve injuries in the future.

Not surprisingly, she was named one of the top technology innovators for 2002, by MIT's Technology Review magazine. "This has certainly provided greater exposure and publicity to my work, especially with the general public," she smiles.

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