Strategic Initiative Fund project brings together six engineering and clinical teams to adapt integrated photonics for monitoring inflammatory bowel disease and bipolar disorder.
An interdisciplinary University of Michigan team has received a $750,000 Strategic Initiative Fund award to develop low-cost, at-home biosensors that could help patients monitor biomarkers associated with chronic diseases.
Led by Xudong “Sherman” Fan, the Richard A. Auhll Endowed Professor of Engineering and Professor, Biomedical Engineering, the four-year project will bring together six principal investigators from U-M Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Psychiatry, and Internal Medicine.
The team will initially focus on inflammatory bowel disease, which affects approximately 3 million Americans and contributes an estimated $25 billion in annual health care costs, and bipolar disorder, which affects roughly 4% of the population and is a leading cause of disability. U-M is a national leader in both research and clinical care for these conditions.
“Biomedical Engineering sits at the interface between the College of Engineering and the Medical School, making it a hub for translational research,” Dr. Fan said. “This project brings together engineering expertise in biosensing and integrated photonics with clinical expertise from Psychiatry and Internal Medicine.”
Integrated photonics—the use of microchips to generate, guide and detect light—is a backbone technology for more than 90% of global data communications, including data centers and emerging artificial intelligence clusters. Its potential for biosensing, however, remains comparatively underexplored.
Recent advances by U-M engineering researchers may make it possible to mass-produce highly functional integrated photonic biosensors at ultralow cost. The team’s goal is to translate a technology commonly associated with expensive, high-performance computing infrastructure into an affordable and potentially disposable device suitable for home use.
“The basic idea is to leverage integrated photonic circuits to create something extremely inexpensive, while maintaining the sensitivity needed for at-home use,” Dr. Fan said. “Integrated photonic circuits are widely used in data centers and AI systems, but those devices are high-performance and expensive. We are trying to use the same concept while reducing the cost significantly.”
For Dr. Fan, the award also creates an opportunity to advance an idea that has evolved over decades. His laboratory has long worked with miniature optical biosensors that use light and to detect subtle molecular interactions. Earlier versions, however, were too expensive and difficult to operate for practical use outside a laboratory.
“I have been thinking about doing something like this for 15 or 20 years,” Dr. Fan said. “We developed optical biosensors, but at the time they were not suitable for home use because they were expensive and difficult to operate.”
More recently, Dr. Fan began discussing with EECS Professor Di Liang how the researchers could reduce device costs without sacrificing sensing performance. The Strategic Initiative Fund provided an opportunity to turn those conversations into a broader engineering and clinical collaboration.
“We had the idea, but we did not have enough time, personnel or resources to pursue it before this,” Dr. Fan noted. “When the Strategic Initiative Fund opportunity became available, I spoke with Professor Liang and our clinical collaborators. Everyone was excited, and we formed a team of six principal investigators.”
The project’s first phase will focus on engineering development. Drs. Fan and Liang will explore strategies for designing and fabricating the integrated photonic sensor, with the goal of demonstrating a working prototype.
The clinical teams will then compare the device’s performance with current laboratory standards and routine clinical methods. Researchers will also consider cost, usability, patient experience and the clarity with which results can be interpreted. The clinical teams include the Department of Internal Medicine (Shirley Cohen-Mekelburg and Shrinivas Bishu are from the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology), and the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Program in the Department of Psychiatry (Sarah Sperry, PhD, Mark Ilgen, PhD).
“The first phase will focus on engineering and developing a prototype,” Dr. Fan said. “We will then work with the clinical teams to compare its performance with current standards. We also want to reduce the cost, account for the patient experience, and make the device user-friendly and the data easy to interpret.”
Numerous clinical applications exist. For example, because bipolar disorder (BD) can change quickly, occasional clinical visits and patients’ recollections may miss early mood shifts or signs that treatment is—or is not—working. Daily self-tracking can help, but it is burdensome and difficult to maintain. An easy at-home monitoring tool could provide more timely information without requiring extra effort from patients.
One promising indicator is C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation. CRP is currently measured through blood tests, making frequent monitoring impractical. An at-home device that continuously tracks CRP could help researchers better understand links among inflammation, mood changes and treatment response. Ultimately, this technology could help patients and clinicians recognize changes sooner and make more informed treatment decisions.
The researchers expect limited testing with human participants to begin during the project’s third and fourth years, after initial engineering and benchmarking work has been completed.
If successful, an affordable at-home sensor could support earlier detection of disease-related changes, more timely intervention and improved quality of life. It could also generate longitudinal, quantitative health data outside traditional clinical settings—information that may eventually support AI-enabled precision medicine.
In addition to developing the sensor platform, the team plans to host workshops during the project’s second, third and fourth years. These events will bring together researchers from across U-M and other institutions to exchange knowledge and build collaborations in integrated photonic sensing.
“We want U-M to serve as a national hub for integrated photonic circuit sensing,” Dr. Fan said. “This award provides seed funding that can help us pursue additional support at the federal and state levels, as well as from nonprofit organizations and research institutes.”
The project builds on complementary strengths across U-M in biosensor development, integrated photonic circuits and clinical research. It also reflects BME’s joint position within Michigan Engineering and the Medical School, which helps connect fundamental engineering advances with unmet health care needs.
“Michigan is very strong in every aspect of this project—from biosensing and integrated photonic circuits to clinical research and care,” Dr. Fan said. “We have assembled people with deep expertise across these areas, and I believe the collaboration will benefit every member of the team.”
“We are very grateful for this funding and excited to get started,” Dr. Fan said. “Everyone on the team sees the potential of this opportunity.”
The University has announced, through an article in The University Record and a post on the Look to Michigan website, 37 initiatives selected to receive funding from the inaugural SIF open call.