BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Cell Mechanics Based Microfluidics for Disease Diagnosis &amp\; Th
 erapy:  From Bench to Bedside - Prof. Chwee Teck (C.T.) Lim\, Department o
 f Biomedical Engineering\, Biomedical Institute for Global Health Research
  and Technology\, Mechanobiology Institute\, National University of Singap
 ore
DTSTART:20190529T130000Z
DTEND:20190529T140000Z
UID:TALK125215@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Hilde Hambro
DESCRIPTION:There are approximately 5 billion cells in one milliliter of b
 lood with red blood cells (RBCs) accounting for >99% of all cellular compo
 nents. Besides blood constituents\, pathogenic microorganisms or diseased 
 cells can also be present in peripheral blood.  In fact\, this is of clini
 cal significance as their presence in blood can present possible routes fo
 r disease detection\, diagnosis and even therapy. However\, the presence o
 f the large number of RBCs complicates removal of pathogens in blood as we
 ll as makes disease diagnosis such as detection of rare circulating tumour
  cells (CTCs) in blood of cancer patients extremely challenging. Here\, we
  address these issues and demonstrate that physical biomarkers such as cel
 l size and deformability can be effectively used for diseased cell detecti
 on (for diagnosis) as well as separation (for therapy) from blood using mi
 crofluidics by leveraging on its many inherent advantages such as high sen
 sitivity and spatial resolution\, short processing time and low device cos
 t. We developed a suite of microfluidic biochips that exploit the principl
 es of size/deformability based separation as well as inertial focusing to 
 allow for high throughput continual detection and separation of diseased c
 ells such as bacteria\, malaria infected red blood cells and CTCs.  We wil
 l showcase examples of diagnosis of cancer via the detection and retrieval
  of CTCs from peripheral blood of patients via a routine blood draw (aka l
 iquid biopsy)\, detection of malaria infected red blood cells as well as t
 herapy by demonstrating the extracorporeal removal of bacteria from blood.
   These simple\, efficient and cost effective microfluidic platforms will 
 be imperative in realizing point-of-care (POC) diagnostics as well as the 
 enrichment of clinical samples for subsequent downstream molecular analyse
 s. Some of these devices have since been commercialized. 
LOCATION:LR6\, Department of Engineering
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR