Microfluidic Technologies for Disease Diagnosis, Therapeutics and Personalized Treatment

Departments: Biomedical Engineering
Time: Monday, May 4, 2015 - 11:00am - 12:00pm
Type:
Presenter: Chwee Teck (C.T.) Lim Provost’s Chair Professor Dept. of Biomedical Engineering & Mechanobiology Institute National University of Singapore
Room/Office: Engineering Student Center
Location:
DL 107
10 Hillhouse Ave
New Haven, CT 06520
United States
See map: Google Maps

 

Yale University, Department of Biomedical Engineering Special Seminar

When: Monday, May 4th, 2015

Place: Engineering Student Center DL 107  

Time: 11 AM


“Microfluidic Technologies for Disease Diagnosis, Therapeutics

 and Personalized Treatment”

                                                                       

Chwee Teck (C.T.) Lim

Provost’s Chair Professor

Dept. of Biomedical Engineering & Mechanobiology Institute

National University of Singapore  

 

Abstract: Our blood comprises ~5 billion cells in one milliliter with red blood cells (RBCs) accounting for >99% of all cellular components suspended in protein-rich plasma. Besides blood constituents, pathogenic microorganisms or diseased cells can also be present in peripheral blood in certain diseases, which has clinical significance and present possible routes for disease detection, diagnosis and therapy. However, the presence of the large number of RBCs complicates removal of pathogens in blood as well 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 size and deformability can be effectively used for diseased cell detection and separation from blood using microfluidics by leveraging on its many inherent advantages such as high sensitivity and spatial resolution, short processing time and low device cost. We developed a suite of microfluidic biochips that exploit the principles of size/deformability based separation as well as inertial focusing to allow for high throughput continuous detection and separation of diseased cells.  These simple, efficient and cost effective microfluidic platforms will be imperative in realizing point-of-care (POC) diagnostics and invaluable for many downstream clinical and biological applications as well as personalized treatment.

 

Bio: Prof Lim is a Provost’s Chair Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and also a Principal Investigator at the Mechanobiology Institute at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include mechanobiology of human diseases and the development of microfluidic biochips for disease detection and diagnosis.  Prof Lim has authored more than 260 peer-reviewed papers (including 36 invited/review articles) and delivered more than 250 invited talks. He is currently on the editorial boards of 12 international journals.  Prof Lim has also co-founded four startups that commercialize the technologies developed in his lab. Prof Lim and his team have won more than 40 research awards and honors including the university’s Outstanding Researcher Award and TiE50 Award (Silicon Valley) in 2014, Credit Suisse Technopreneur of the Year Award, Wall Street Journal Asian Innovation Award (Gold), TechVenture Most Disruptive Innovation Award, Asian Entrepreneurship Award (First Prize) in 2012, President's Technology Award and the TechVenture Rising Star Innovator Award in 2011 and the IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award in 2010.    

 

Hosted by: Prof. Kathryn Miller-Jensen