I-Corps: Improving Acoustophoretic-based Cell Sorting Technologies

I-Corps：改进基于声泳的细胞分选技术

• 批准号: 1646947
• 负责人: Ming Dao
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-08-15 至 2018-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1646947&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Improving; Acoustophoretic; based; Cell

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project includes improved cancer diagnostics, more accurate personalized treatments, and reduced public health burden related to cancer. The project is aimed at commercializing acoustic-based cell sorting technologies and providing diagnostic and therapeutic devices, taking advantage of the estimated US $14 billion liquid biopsy market in the United States alone. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have already been established as important prognostic biomarkers in many tumor entities namely breast, prostate, lung and colon cancer. However, capture of viable CTCs at high purity from the peripheral blood of cancer patients still poses a significant technical challenge. The acoustic-based techniques are mostly promising, compared to other technologies, due to the inherent advantages in preserving the integrity, functionality, and viability of biological cells using label-free and contact-free sorting. The acoustic CTC isolation devices, once commercialized, can be used by cancer researchers to study cancer metastasis and discover new drugs, can be used by medical doctors for cancer diagnostics and prognosis evaluation, and can be used to develop personalized immunotherapies to increase the cure rate. As an example, the downstream analyses of the sorted and expanded patient-specific CTCs may significantly increase the response rate of the latest groundbreaking immunotherapeutic approaches.This I-Corps project aims to develop commercially viable acoustic cell sorting devices based on the latest microfluidics technologies developed in research. The term 'microfluidics' relates to miniaturized handling of fluidic samples of sub-microliter or lower volume by utilizing miniaturized structures ranging in micron or submicron dimensions. Miniaturization of conventional laboratory processes in microfluidic platforms using well-established microfabrication technology has drawn great attention, and led to the development of the so-called Lab-on-a-Chip devices. Lab-on-a-Chip aims at integration, miniaturization, parallelization, and automation of biochemical processes, performed into a small chip of a few square millimeters to a few square centimeters in size. The higher degree of automation and the reduced energy consumption renders such microfluidic devices excellent candidates for point of care (PoC) diagnostics. This team fabricated and tested a novel microfluidic platform using surface acoustic waves that can effectively filter out circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from peripheral blood samples of cancer patients. This is a generic capture scheme since CTCs are considered to be general biomarkers i.e., most cancer types shed CTCs in the bloodstream or the lymphatic system. This acoustic-based cell sorting platform is a promising method for capturing CTCs label-free and contact-free, preserving their inherent biological characteristics.

该I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力包括改善癌症诊断，更准确的个性化治疗方法以及减轻与癌症有关的公共卫生负担。该项目旨在将基于声学的细胞分选技术商业化并提供诊断和治疗设备，并利用仅美国估计的140亿美元液体活检市场的优势。在许多肿瘤实体中，即乳腺癌，前列腺，肺癌和结肠癌，循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）已经被确定为重要的预后生物标志物。但是，癌症患者周围血液中纯净的可行CTC仍然构成了重大的技术挑战。与其他技术相比，由于使用无标签和无接触式分析，基于声学的技术与其他技术相比，主要是有希望的。癌症研究人员可以使用一旦商业化的声学CTC隔离装置来研究癌症转移并发现新药，可以被医生用于癌症诊断和预后评估，并可用于开发个性化的免疫疗法来提高治疗率。例如，对分类和扩展的患者特异性CTC进行的下游分析可能会大大提高最新开创性的免疫治疗方法的响应率。此I-Corps项目旨在根据研究中开发的最新微流体技术开发商业上可行的声学细胞分类设备。 “微流体”一词与使用微米或亚微米尺寸的微型结构相关的亚微晶或较低体积的流体样品有关。使用公认的微加工技术对微流体平台中传统实验室过程的微型化引起了人们的关注，并导致了所谓的实验室芯片设备的开发。实验室芯片的目的是将生化过程的集成，微型化，并行化和自动化，并在几毫米的小芯片中进行，以达到几平方厘米的大小。较高的自动化程度和减少的能源消耗使此类微流体设备出色的护理点（POC）诊断。该团队使用表面声波制造并测试了一个新型的微流体平台，该平台可以有效地从癌症患者的外周血样本中有效地滤除循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）。这是一种通用捕获方案，因为CTC被认为是一般的生物标志物，即大多数癌症类型的血液或淋巴系统中的CTC。这个基于声学的细胞分选平台是一种捕获CTC的无标签和无接触性的有前途的方法，可保留其固有的生物学特征。