Cell-Based Microfluidic Technology for Cancer Diagnosis & Personalized Medicine

Prof. Chwee Teck Lim

新加坡国立大学

时间：2016年1月18日（星期一）上午10:30

地点：卢嘉锡楼202报告厅

厦门大学谱学分析与仪器教育部重点实验室

厦门大学化学化工学院

2016年1月14日

报告人简介：

Prof Lim is a Provost’s Chair Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a Principal Investigator of 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, diagnosis and therapy. Prof Lim has authored more than 280 peer-reviewed papers (including 38 invited/review articles), 26 book chapters and delivered more than 270 invited talks. He sits on the editorial boards of more than 12 international journals. He also co-founded one incubator and four startups which are commercializing technologies developed in his lab. Prof Lim and his team have won more than 50 research awards and honors including the Vladimir K. Zworykin Award in 2015, University’s Outstanding Researcher Award and Outstanding Innovator Award in 2014, the Credit Suisse Technopreneur of the Year Award, Wall Street Journal Asian Innovation Award (Gold) in 2012, President's Technology Award in 2011 and the IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award in 2010. His research was cited by the MIT Technology Review magazine as one of the top ten emerging technologies of 2006 that will "have a significant impact on business, medicine or culture".

报告摘要：

The presence of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in bloodstream of patients with epithelial cancers is an important intermediate step in cancer metastasis and can provide valuable insights into disease detection, staging and personalized treatment. As compared to obtaining a tissue biopsy which is invasive and painful, "liquid biopsy" for CTCs detection can be easily performed via a routine blood draw. The presence and number of CTCs in peripheral blood has been associated with the severity of the disease and have potential use for early detection, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment monitoring purposes. The isolation of CTCs using microfluidics is attractive as the flow conditions can be accurately manipulated to achieve an efficient separation. Here, we demonstrate several effective separation methods by utilizing the unique differences in the mechanical properties such as size and deformability of cancer cells from that of blood cells. By exploiting the fluid dynamics in specially designed microfluidic channels, CTCs which are generally stiffer and larger can be physically separated from the more deformable blood constituents. Using this label-free approach, we are able to retrieve viable CTCs that are not only suitable for downstream molecular analysis such as genetic or RNA sequencing, but also for expansion and culture. With blood specimens from cancer patients, we confirmed successful detection, isolation and retrieval of CTCs. Identification of CTCs via their mechanical signatures will not only aid in the determination of malignancy and disease, but also enable personalized treatment by the possible detection of any actionable mutation unique to individual patient.