MEMP PhD Thesis Defense: Louis DeRidder

Closed-loop automated drug infusion regulator (CLAUDIA): A clinically translatable, closed-loop drug delivery system for personalized drug dosing

Dosing of chemotherapies is often calculated according to the weight and/or height of the patient or equations derived from these such as body surface area (BSA). Such calculations fail to capture intra-and inter-individual pharmacokinetic variation, which can lead to order of magnitude variations in systemic chemotherapy levels, and thus under-or overdosing of patients. We introduce a closed-loop drug delivery system that can dynamically adjust its infusion rate to the patient to reach and maintain the drug’s target concentration, regardless of a patient’s pharmacokinetics (PK). This system uses high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry for the detection of the drug, which makes the system a platform technology that could be adapted to personalize the dosing of multiple different drugs. We demonstrate that Closed-Loop AUtomated Drug Infusion regulAtor (CLAUDIA) can control the concentration of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) in rabbits according to a range of concentration-time profiles (which could be useful in chronomodulated chemotherapy), and over a range of PK conditions that mimic the PK variability observed clinically. We then expand CLAUDIA to control the concentration of additional chemotherapies and investigate its cost-effectiveness for the healthcare system. Clinically, CLAUDIA has the potential to reduce the side effects and improve the efficacy for many drugs. 

Thesis Supervisors:
Giovanni Traverso, Ph.D.
Director of the Laboratory for Translational Engineering
Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT

Robert Langer, ScD
Institute Professor and Professor, Departments of Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering, MIT

Thesis Committee Chair:
Daniel Anderson, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Institute of Medical Engineering and Science, MIT 

Thesis Reader:
Ameya Kirtane, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmaceutics, University of Minnesota 

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Topic: Louis DeRidder MEMP PhD Thesis Defense
Time: Thursday, December 4, 2025, 3:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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