A tiny patch with a seaweed component is helping UConn collect human data. Here’s why.

Hartford Courant – Tuesday, April 7, 2026
By Helen I. Bennett

Don’t mistake it for a Band Aid.

The micropatch being used by researchers at UConn Center on Aging and The Jackson Laboratory is actually more like velcro and it has mini projectors that are derived with help from seaweed (FDA-approved), according to the researchers.

Mini projectors?

Yes, said Dr. Sasan Jalili, assistant professor at The Jackson Laboratory and the Department of Immunology at UConn School of Medicine, the painless patches are a non-invasive system, “a tool to collect immune cells, and bio markers from the skin.”

Using this method, in which the patches are placed on volunteers, the researchers are seeking information about the human immune system, especially as we age.

“We needed a system and platform,” for gathering information, Jalili said. “These are in the interstitial fluid — that is basically the fluid within the skin tissue.”

The Jackson Laboratory and the department at UConn School of Medicine is now doing a collaborative clinical trial, called “Skin Immunity as a Function of Frailty, Aging, and Skin Microbiome Composition” and is using the mini skin micropatch technology on study participants at UConn Center on Aging, according to Jalili.

The micropatch technology was created by researchers at The Jackson Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jalili said the micropatch, with its “very tiny projections” and biological material “we engineered” to absorb fluids for certain biomarkers, then allows analyzing of the immune cells and biomarkers. A positive part of the micropatches is that “you can’t just keep doing skin biopsies,” and blood draws, and this system means obtaining study material without them, to get to know the local immune response, Jalili said.

Julie Robison, a UConn Health professor of medicine and public health sciences, said the study is looking at skin in the context of aging as “things change from younger to older people and things are different in older people who might be the same age but have different frailty” such as cognitive and physical ability.

Jalili said that, in the past, Robison and others have shown that as people age their microbiome shifts, such as the bacteria that live in skin, and “it shifts and changes over time” and that “there have been a lot of studies on how changes in bacteria affects our health.”

“In the current study and the previous study we are doing a lot of collection of data on the skin,” she said. “We are still doing the microbiome data collection and we added the” patch.

Having this data could lead to better diagnosis of diseases, new therapeutics for patients and more personalized approaches for patients, and, in the context of aging, could help to know what happens over time, according to Jalili and Robison.

“We wanted to know how locally the changes in these bacteria would affect the immune system and response,” Jalili said. “We would like to understand the dynamic shift in the status of patients.”

Robison noted that, “as people get older they have different diagnoses and different experiences.”

“Our goal is to help patients, help them have better extended years of life … better disease monitoring,” Jalili said. “If you could predict what happens in aging you could be armed to face that.”

Robison said that, with the study, “part of the excitement is around the collaboration, the Center on Aging recruiting people who are interested in science.”

The study is seeking participants, Robison said. “We are looking for the broadest most diverse participant group that we can find,” and that means people from different backgrounds, different races and economic levels.

“We want more people with a broader experience in life to participate,” Robison said.

Those who join the study will have the painless, dime-sized Velcro-like circles placed on seven different spots on the body; one set for 20 minutes, others on for 24 hours, so two groups of seven in all, Robison said. The next round will be done in June and the study is seeking people 20 to 40, and 60 and older, frail, as well as not, she said.

Robison said, “we talked a lot about years of life, versus life of years. Extending life has been a goal for a long time, we want to extend healthy life.”

UConn did note that the research is NIH-funded, with clinical trial research being done at UConn Center on Aging and one subaward of the National Institutes of Aging grant awarded to overall principal investigator Julia Oh, Ph.D., of Duke University, who is formerly of The Jackson Laboratory. Robison is principal investigator for the subaward testing the micropatch in clinical trial and overseeing participant recruitment and data collection; Jalili is performing the clinical trial study’s data analysis.

For more information or to enroll in the current clinical trial cohort, see the study flyer and contact the UConn Center on Aging study coordinators: Alba Siharath Santiago 860-679-3675, santiago@uchc.edu or Sarah Driscoll 860-679-6237, sdriscoll@uchc.edu.

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