092622_GYS_2022_ONLINE

42 GU I D E to Y E L L OW S P R I NG S | 2O22 – 2O23 to be somewhere between 80 and 120 milligrams per deci- liter. If it’s below 80, you can die. If it’s above 120, you can get sick, lose toes, et cetera. Sure — diabetics want to know if their levels are trending up or down, but most want to know the exact number; 23A did just that.” Brunsman, who worked for the vast majority of his career at YSI, sat down with the News to tell the long and compli- cated story of the ground- breaking Model 23A. Although the machine was taken off the market a little over five years ago, Brunsman said that 23A’s profound effects on the field of biosensors can still be seen. Over the course of its nearly 50-year implementation and beyond, Brunsman said, the constituent technology in 23A has likely saved the lives of millions. BUILDING A BIOSENSOR The story begins in the basement of Antioch Col - lege’s science building, YSI’s first home. The company was founded in 1948 by two local engineers and a chemist, Hardy Trolander, John Bene - dict and David Jones, who forged their partnership from their time at Antioch College. Their initial work came from Fels, Kettering and Wright- Patterson Field, which brought them measuring and testing equipment to either repair or redesign. One of YSI’s earlier projects was developing components for one of the first heart-lung machines the world had ever seen. Tasking the developers and researchers at YSI with this project was renowned biochemist and Antioch alumnus Leland Clark, who is widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of the field of biosensors. One of the more significant parts of Clark’s heart-lung machine was the inclusion of a revolutionary membrane elec - trode, a sensor that measured oxygen — the first of its kind. The electrode was made by placing polarized platinum and silver wire electrodes behind an oxygen membrane. The electrodes catalyze a chemical reaction, and then issue out a measurement of ambient oxygen concentration in a given liquid. “It’s simple enough,” Brunsman said with a smirk, “But still really, really inventive for the time.” And it was. In 1962, the burgeoning field of biosensors kicked off with the patenting of the oxygen sensor bearing its inventor’s name: the Clark Electrode. This device ushered in a new era of clinically measuring oxygen levels that expanded far beyond its initial use in the heart-lung machine — especially at YSI. Fast forward to the end of the decade when Trolander, then CEO of YSI, and Ed Molloy, then manager of a new products department, brought Brunsman into the project fresh out of college. Right away, Brunsman was assigned the role of projects manager. Over the coming two years, until the end of the ’60s, he worked on redesign - ing an impressive array of different instruments: tem - perature controllers, drive-in window amplifiers, connectiv - ity meters and others — but never a clinical electro-chemi- cal instrument. “The first two years [at YSI] were a real education on how taking a design from concept worked,” Brunsman said. “YSI was a really unusual place at that time. It was full of very, very interesting people. And they were all — myself included — generalists. That means if someone came to us needing something designed, whether it was a mechani- cal, electrical or a chemical problem, it didn’t matter. We’d work on it together.” Given the growing preoc- cupation with biosenors, Brunsman and his colleagues were beginning to wrestle with new and pressing challenges. Could YSI create a device that accurately measured glu- cose? Could Clark’s electrode sensor be developed into a commercial instrument? Upon Molloy’s untimely death in 1969, Brusnman was tapped to lead the charge in answering those questions. Clark had tasked Brunsman and his team at YSI to mea - sure glucose under certain parameters: a device would have to accommodate a small sample size, provide results in less than a minute and work on whole blood. “They said, ‘Here, Alan, do this project,’” Brunsman said. “Everytime I think back on it, I think, ‘What the hell were they thinking?’ I was two years out of college. Never done a clinical instrument. No degree in chemistry. It was me stand - ing there alone.” But in reality, Brunsman was far from alone. YSI imme - diately hired two additional members of the project team: David Newman, an engineer with Antioch roots, and Jeff Huntington, a local chem - ist with a Ph.D. Additionally, at the time, YSI was in the midst of forging a relationship with the Danish multinational healthcare technology com- ▲ An advertisement from the 1980s for the Model 23A Minerva Bieri SRES ® Senior Sales Associate ® 937-430-0843 For listings, sales, market overview and more: www.MinervaBieri.com