Undergraduates Receive Collegiate Inventors Competition Award

Four Harvard undergraduates have received second place and a $10,000 award in the national Collegiate Inventors Competition for their development of a convenient, low-cost chemotherapy patch, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences announced Tuesday.

The product, named ChemoPatch, delivers liquid medication at precise times and intervals to cancer patients. In its current form, the patch has the capability to deliver up to three chemotherapeutic drugs to a patient through microneedles.

Beginning in the spring of their freshman year, Nikhil Mehandru ’15, Aaron Perez '15, Alydaar Rangwala '14, and Brandon K. Sim '14 have spent hundreds of hours working in the laboratory to develop the ChemoPatch.

“I think that what makes this ChemoPatch special is that it’s non-invasive, it’s easy for a cancer patient to use, it allows a new degree of control, and it allows convenient multi-drug chemotherapy,” said Sujata K. Bhatia, assistant director for undergraduate studies in biomedical engineering. “Both my parents are cancer survivors. I saw what my mom went through…If you can add that extra bit of convenience, you can have that cancer patient say ‘I’m not going to give up, I’m going to make it.’”

The idea for the ChemoPatch originated in the fall of 2011 when Mehandru approached Bhatia to conduct an independent project that would have an impact on global health. Mehandru wanted to build something that would aid in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. After deciding to focus his research on cancer, he gathered a team coming from a variety of academic backgrounds that range from applied mathematics and physics to computer science and statistics.

“What’s fun about working with undergraduates is that they really don’t see any limits,” Bhatia said. “With more experience you can get more realistic, but that can cramp your creativity. It’s really more exciting [than working with adult professionals in the private sector].”

With the recognition and validation from the Collegiate Inventors Competition, an annual competition that fosters innovation and entrepreneurship in students developing revolutionary products and technologies at their respective colleges and universities, Perez said that the team hopes to pursue further research and development to focus on the product’s functionality.

The team of students also received support from mechanical and biomedical engineering professor Conor J. Walsh, who has been involved in the project’s engineering side, as well as legal and business advice from Paul B. Bottino, executive director of the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard and a lecturer on innovation and entrepreneurship.