Transport, manipulation, selection and assay of single living cells

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Scientific progress in medicine has allowed health care professionals to scale their observations from systemic symptoms down to characterizing specific cell groups. This has resulted in more accurate, patient and disease-specific treatment plans that target precise pathologic processes. Thus, single cell assessment becomes the natural next step. The main objective of the proposed program is to advance the knowledge in development of microsystems that enable single cell assay. The short term objectives of the proposed program are directed towards development of models of physical phenomena that enable users to transport and accurately position targeted living cells separated from blood cells and development of microfluidics capable to accurately perform such tasks. Further, any enabling detection method that would help characterize the individual living cell from the biological, mechanical or electrical point of view will be considered. In long term, the principles used to separate, manipulate and position single cells will adjust to yield higher sensitivity and accuracy such as to produce less false negatives or positives. Meanwhile, the principles of cell separation, manipulation and positioning will enable development of microfluidics that could be used as separators, test devices, and incubators. The latter will enable real time sub-culture and evaluation of personalized treatment for certain diseases. Thus, the characterization of single cells after single cell trial treatment could yield valuable insight on the development of strategies in the development of personalized treatment. The short term research program focuses on engineering application to microfluidic and MEMS while the biology aspect is of concern but not a subject of investigation. The biology of single cells will become a subject of investigation in parallel with a microsystem development targeting a specific assay during the long term research program. The proposed research topic is interesting as it provides more insight into life sciences, and it is challenging for the engineering side as many of the issues related to this subject on modeling of the electric field and the interaction with media and living cells, as well as micro-fabrication techniques, are presently unknown.