Micro- and nano-scale technologies for applications in medicine and biology (Talk)

• Utkan Demirci (Professor)

• Stanford University School of Medicine, Department Radiology, Canary Center for Early Cancer Detection

Note: This talk will be broadcasted from MPI-IS Stuttgart to MPI-IS Tuebingen TTR Seminar Room!

Micro- and nano-scale technologies can have a significant impact on medicine and biology in the areas of cell manipulation, diagnostics and monitoring. At the convergence of these new technologies and biology, we research for enabling solutions to the real world problems at the clinic. Emerging nano-scale and microfluidic technologies integrated with biology offer innovative possibilities for creating intelligent, mobile medical lab-chip devices that could transform diagnostics and monitoring, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. In this talk, we will present an overview of our laboratory's work in these areas focussed on applications in point-of-care and primary care settings including ovarian cancer detection from urine, rapid CD4 counts for global health, multiple pathogen detection with a focus on viral load from unprocessed whole blood. We will also introduce magnetic levitation methods for label free sorting of rare cells from whole blood. We will also review our work on 3-D biofabrication/bioprinting, and dynamic acoustic and magnetic systems for bottom-up tissue-construct assembly using cell encapsulating microscale hydrogels to engineer the 3-D cellular microenvironment. As an example, we will present a microfluidic platform, where flow induces a motile and aggressive phenotype in ovarian cancer nodules via increased epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). These emerging technologies could shape our future creating broadly applicable platforms for scientific discovery, providing clinical solutions for resourceconstrained settings in the developing world as well as for primary care settings in the developed world.

Biography: Dr. Demirci leads a productive group of ~30 researchers focusing on micro- and nano-scale technologies. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1999 as a James B. Angell Scholar (summa cum laude) from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his M.S. degree in 2001 in Electrical Engineering, M.S. degree in Management Science and Engineering in 2005 and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2005, all from Stanford University. Dr. Demirci creates technologies to manipulate cells in nanoliter volumes to enable solutions for real world problems in medicine including applications in infectious disease and cancer diagnostics, cell encapsulation in nanoliter droplets for cryobiology, and bottom-up tissue engineering. His research interests involve applications of microfluidics, nanoscale technologies and acoustics in medicine, especially: portable, inexpensive, disposable viral load technology platforms for HIV in resource-constrained settings for global health problems; 3-D bioprinting and tissue models including 3-D cancer and neural cultures. Dr. Demirci has published over 110 peer reviewed publications in journals including PNAS, Advanced Materials, Nature Communications, Small, Trends in Biotechnology, over 150 conference abstracts and proceedings, 10 book chapters, and four edited book. His work was highlighted in Wired Magazine, Nature Photonics, Nature Medicine, MIT Technology Review Magazine, Reuters Health News, Science Daily, and Science News. His scientific work has been recognized by numerous national and international awards including the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award (2012), and the IEEE-EMBS Early Career Achievement Award (2012). He was selected as one of the world’s top 35 young innovators under the age of 35 (TR-35) by the MIT Technology Review. In 2004, he led a team that won the Stanford University Entrepreneur’s Challenge Competition and Global Start-up Competition in Singapore. His patents have been translated into start-up companies including DxNOW, Koek Biotech.