BIONIC EYES, ARTIFICIAL ORGANS, BETTER AIDS TREATMENTS SEEM FAR-FETCHED? NOT FOR A . . .MANN WITH A VISION.Byline: Ben Sullivan Daily News Staff Writer The future is a wondrous place for Alfred Mann. The founder of seven electronics and biomedical bi·o·med·i·cal adj. 1. Of or relating to biomedicine. 2. Of, relating to, or involving biological, medical, and physical sciences. firms, including Sylmar-based MiniMed Inc., Mann envisions a day when the deaf can hear, the blind see and the chronically ill leave their conditions behind. Those who know him say the 73-year-old engineer will be at the forefront of such progress. Mann has spent a lifetime developing devices that augment or replace defective parts of the human body. In the process, Mann has accumulated a personal wealth estimated at $500 million, allowing him to fund the planned construction of biomedical research centers at the University of Southern California The U.S. News & World Report ranked USC 27th among all universities in the United States in its 2008 ranking of "America's Best Colleges", also designating it as one of the "most selective universities" for admitting 8,634 of the almost 34,000 who applied for freshman admission and the University of California, Los Angeles UCLA comprises the College of Letters and Science (the primary undergraduate college), seven professional schools, and five professional Health Science schools. Since 2001, UCLA has enrolled over 33,000 total students, and that number is steadily rising. . ``My life has been a fairy tale A Fairy Tale (AKA A Magic Tale) - Fantastic ballet in 1 Act, with choreography by Marius Petipa, and music by (?) Richter. First presented by students of the Imperial Ballet School on April 4/16 (Julian/Gregorian calendar dates), 1891 in the ,'' the nuts-and-bolts scientist said, apparently as amazed as anyone at his good fortune. Now well past the age when most of his peers have retired, Mann is embarking on some of his most ambitious projects to date, applying 50 years of engineering prowess to conditions as varied and stubborn as blindness and AIDS. While the projects are daunting daunt tr.v. daunt·ed, daunt·ing, daunts To abate the courage of; discourage. See Synonyms at dismay. [Middle English daunten, from Old French danter, from Latin , even fantastic by some reckoning, those who have worked with Mann say he has seldom taken on a job he didn't see through. ``I'd call this (guy) the most excellent medical device story of the century,'' gushed Salomon Smith Barney analyst Melissa Wilmoth. Fairy tale, indeed. At the heart of Mann's business fiefdom fief·dom n. 1. The estate or domain of a feudal lord. 2. Something over which one dominant person or group exercises control: is Sylmar-based MiniMed, and it is at that 485-employee company that much of the work which most excites Mann is being done. MiniMed specializes in diabetes-control devices, including a popular insulin infusion pump infusion pump A device designed to deliver drugs and/or 'biologicals', at low doses and at a constant or controllable rate; ↑ rates of delivery in such devices may be associated with local hemolysis, compromising the potential benefits of a calibrated delivery that eliminates the need for repeated daily injections of the glucose-regulating drug. The company has seen sales climb to roughly $100 million annually and is considered the U.S. firm best poised to profit from a growing awareness, particularly among health plans, of the need for aggressive treatment of types 1 and 2 diabetes. ``This (insulin pump insulin pump n. A portable device for people with diabetes that injects insulin at programmed intervals in order to regulate blood sugar levels. ) market is only 6 to 7 percent penetrated in the U.S.,'' said Scott Wilkin, an analyst at Warburg Dillon Read Investment bank created by the 1997 merger of S.G. Warburg & Co. and Dillon, Read & Co. Subsequently renamed UBS Warburg and now part of UBS AG, where the Warburg name was eventually dropped. in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . ``There's a lot of legs left in it.'' Parallel to the pump, MiniMed has been developing an implantable sensor for continuous, real-time testing of a diabetic's blood sugar level, eliminating the need for repeated finger pricks to draw blood. By combining that sensor with the pump, Mann hopes to ``close the loop,'' producing the world's first artificial pancreas, able to simultaneously monitor and adjust a diabetic's glucose level. ``It would be revolutionary, the end of the problems of diabetes as we know it,'' said Dr. Francine Kaufman, former president of the American Diabetes Association The American Diabetes Association, or the ADA, is an American health organization providing diabetes research, information and advocacy. Founded in 1940, the American Diabetes Association conducts programs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, reaching hundreds of and a professor of medicine at USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. . Kaufman said that while the technological hurdles involved have to date prevented the development of such a device by others, ``I have no doubt Al Mann will do it. He is a visionary.'' Using much the same concept, Mann and MiniMed are pursuing a pump system for more effective dosing of AIDS drugs. Patients on certain AIDS medications take pills or injections throughout the day to compensate for the drugs' short effectiveness, periods often as small as two hours. To dampen the peak-and-valley effect that such a regimen inevitably causes, patients are kept on doses high enough so that even when the drug level in their bodies tapers off prior to their next injection, it is still concentrated enough to fight the AIDS virus AIDS virus n. See HIV. . Working on pump Mann is working on a pump system that, as with insulin, would dribble the drug out steadily and at ideal concentrations. The anticipated result is that patients could cut their current doses by up to 98 percent with no drop in efficacy. ``At higher drug concentrations the side effects Side effects Effects of a proposed project on other parts of the firm. are greater and there are more costs. The whole idea is to try to minimize those,'' Mann said. While pumps dominate MiniMed, neural stimulation is the theme at Advanced Bionics, another Mann company in Sylmar. Arguably more research-oriented than MiniMed, the firm uses artificially generated electrical impulses to simulate bodily functions such as hearing and muscle control. To date, Advanced Bionics' biggest hit has been a cochlear implant cochlear implant n. An electronic device that stimulates auditory nerve fibers in the inner ear in individuals with severe or profound bilateral hearing loss, allowing them to recognize some sounds, especially speech sounds. that allows a wide category of profoundly deaf patients to hear. ``That's not a small feat,'' Mann said. But now Mann has turned his sights on vision. ``It's a straightforward approach,'' Mann said, though what he describes is anything but. By attaching hundreds of electrodes to a light-sensitive computer chip and then connecting each lead to the optic nerve, the hope is that Advanced Bionics engineers can construct an artificial eye. The problem is the number of electrodes, Mann said. ``Right now we have about 60 and in the near future should have a few more. But you need on the order of a thousand,'' he said. ``We have an in-house time line of four years if everything goes right.'' Similar technology is being explored for restoring muscle control to paraplegics, continence continence /con·ti·nence/ (kon´tin-ens) the ability to control natural impulses.con´tinent con·ti·nence n. 1. Self-restraint; moderation. 2. to people who have lost bladder control and for the easing of chronic pain. Science and business As with most of Mann's undertakings, Advanced Bionics' work promises not only a better quality of life for the devices' users but enormous profits for its creator. Indeed, while Mann has said money is no longer a strong motivator, he is a true believer in the link between science and business. Fostering that connection is the purpose of the university centers he is funding. ``The whole concept of these institutions is to . . . be a bridge, to create on a university campus an industrial lab that licenses its research to companies for manufacturing and marketing,'' he said. The first of the centers is expected to be opened at USC before 2000, with the UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX facility to follow. With arguably his fullest plate ever, Mann, a divorced father of six, said he has no time to worry or desire to slow down. ``Us older guys get up at night and go to the bathroom a lot. When I get up, sometimes I have difficulty falling asleep again. But it's no worry; I'm usually thinking about some device I'm trying to figure out. . . . I just like to work.'' Profile Age: 73 Birthplace: Portland, Ore. Residence: Beverly Hills Personal: Divorced, father of six Education: Bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from UCLA Career: Founder of seven electronics and biomedical companies, including Sylmar's MiniMed Inc.; holds 14 patents; chairman of Southern California Biomedical Council CAPTION(S): photo, box PHOTO (color) Al Mann founded seven electronics and biomedical firms, including Sylmar-based MiniMed and Advanced Bionics. Tom Mendoza/Daily News Box: Profile (see text) |
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