These new medicated skin patches have an innovative wrinkle. Attached to them is a paper-thin, flexible, printed circuit that monitors and controls dosages. The patches are .002 of an inch thick.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

WARWICK — A researcher who helped develop a popular mosquito-killing device now is working on a way to take the sting out of medical treatments by creating a new skin patch for administering prescription drugs.

Emma Durand was chief technology officer at American Biophysics Corp. in North Kingstown, once considered the fastest-growing private company in the United States. American Biophsyics and its mosquito-sucking yard protector were once toasted by the national news media and had gained a key retailing ally in home-improvement goliath Home Depot.

But disputes among American Biophysics investors doomed the company, which ultimately filed for bankruptcy protection. The onetime poster child for Rhode Island technology firms was sold last year to a company in Pennsylvania.

The demise of American Biophysics left Durand with a lot of knowledge about how human skin works, but no way to apply it. Enlisting the aid of two partners with experience in polymer manufacturing, Durand has developed a way to enhance transdermal patches — medicated adhesive pads that are placed on the skin to deliver specific doses of medication through the skin and into the bloodstream.

“I had been thinking about this product since I was with Poly-Flex [Circuit Inc.] in 1986,” Durand said of her idea. “In order to make this work, it required a microprocessor that was too expensive.

“[But] I never let go of this product.”

Transdermal patches have been available in the United States for nearly 30 years, according to a National Institutes of Health Web site. The first was developed to treat motion sickness. Nicotine patches, used to help people quit smoking, are another example of transdermal technology.

The patches have several advantages compared with other methods of drug delivery — they are painless, the drugs are not degraded in the stomach and intestines, and they provide a constant dosage without the need for patients to remember to take medications.

In addition, delivering drugs by way of patches can reduce the side effects of some drugs.

“[Patches] really give [doctors] a degree of control they can’t get with oral medications,” said Durand, who now heads Isis Biopolymer Inc., a Warwick start-up company she founded this year. Durand is president and chief technology officer.

The twist Durand and her research team put on the technology is developing a way to attach medications to a paper-thin, flexible, printed circuit that monitors and controls dosages. The patches are .002 of an inch thick.

Using computer software, doctors can set the dosages for up to three medications that are absorbed into a gel on the underside of the patch. A patient profile would alert the doctor to allergies or potentially harmful interactions with a person’s active prescriptions.

A doctor would e-mail a prescription to a drugstore, where a pharmacist would transfer the dosing information via a hand-held control to the wireless patch. Once programmed, the patches can deliver the medications for up to seven days before being replaced. But before being discarded, the doctor can use a wireless scanner to determine how much of the medication was dispersed into a patient via the patch’s weak electrical current.

Almost all prescription medications can be put into a form that can be made into a patch.

However, drug patches do have shortcomings, the NIH notes on its Web site; the adhesives can irritate the skin and the pads can come loose when moistened — as people shower or sweat.

Durand and her research team, Michael Jordan and Miao Yong-Cao, have worked on adhesives that would reduce those problems.

“We made a serious effort to make it look like a large Band-Aid,” she said. “The patches have a little more tack on the outside [edge] and a little less on the inside.”

As they test the patches, the researchers also are customizing gels to hold medications. They are awaiting about $400,000 in automatic assembly machines, curing units and other equipment to speed up production for clinical trials, which Durand predicts will begin in April in Russia. Isis Biopolymer has contracted with a German manufacturer to produce patches as well for the trials.

Isis Biopolymer is trying to raise another $3 million to give the company “plenty of runway” to gain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the patches, she said.

Raising venture financing in Rhode Island has been difficult, she said.

“I was going to move the company out of state,” until a business contact, accountant Ed Restivo, of Restivo Monacelli in Providence, persuaded her to stay, she said.

Restivo “facilitated” connections to the state’s medical community, Durand said.

“We have clients who frequently ask us for investor participation,” Restivo said of his firm. “Sometimes you hit a sweet spot with them and sometimes you don’t.”

He also invested in the firm, Restivo said.

Like Durand, he is disappointed Isis couldn’t secure financial help from the state’s economic development agencies, Restivo said.

“There really has got to be more of an effort by the state,” to invest in start-up companies, he said.

While the company hasn’t always been successful getting the money it needs to grow, it is getting help from outsiders.

Dr. Edward Iannuccilli, formerly the chairman of Rhode Island Hospital and currently a professor at Brown Medical School, recently joined the Isis board of directors and its medical advisory panel.

Iannuccilli noted that the multidrug regimens of elderly patients are difficult for medical professionals to monitor.

“What I liked about [Durand’s idea] is that there is the quality and compliance [assurance] of what she’s doing,” he said. “This is a way to have safety and compliance.”

He also had a more gut-level reaction to the company’s work.

“It’s a Rhode Island company,” Iannuccilli said. “This is kind of what we need in this state.”

pgrimald@projo.com