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Significance
To advance cancer studies and enable oncologists to make more accurate diagnosis, prognosis, and develop personalized therapies, Prof. John X.J. Zhang and Dr. Peng Chen led a team of bioengineers from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth and the University of Texas at Austin in developing an innovative system that combines inkjet-printing, microfluidic technology, and immunoassay for capturing and manipulating circulating tumor cells (CTCs). This miniaturized bio-analytical system can be further integrated with fluorescent microscope for cancer cell imaging, with fluorescent in-situ hybridization (FISH) and PCR for molecular level cancer studies. It opens up a great many possibilities to optimize cancer diagnostic and tumor management.
“This work provides a new angle, other than traditional tissue biopsy and medical imaging, to approach cancer. A fast, simple and less painful blood test may eventually provide equivalently accurate disease information about individual cancer patient in a timely manner, ” said Zhang. circulating tumor cells detach from primary tumor site, shed into the blood circulation system, and may initiate the deadly cancer metastasis process. Through efficient detection of these cells, especially at an early stage, physicians will be able to design the best diagnosis and treatment strategy for each individual cancer patient.
Immunomagnetic assay has been successfully used to separate rare circulating tumor cells from blood. However, traditional immunomagnetic assay is often limited in the low magnetic field gradient and low density of effective magnetic traps. In this work, Dr. Chen developed a novel method using inkjet-printing technology to fabricate microscale magnetic structures that can be easily deposited on an arbitrary substrate.
This inkjet-printing technology is a versatile but cost-effective approach for rapid prototyping with high accuracy and flexibility. Such microscale magnets, when placed in an external magnetic field, largely enhance the magnetic field and the attractive force applied on the target circulating tumor cells, and hence facilitates the detection. In the experiments with COLO205 (a human colorectal cancer cell line) as the separation target, the inkjet-printed micro-magnets integrated assay increased the system sensitivity by 26% compared with using normal glass slide as the substrate.
Dr. Chen’s research is focused on developing miniaturized high-performance bio-analytical systems for point-of-care and globally relevant medical diagnostic applications. “This project is to implement advanced engineering fabrication, sensing, and manipulating techniques with multiplexing immunoassay to separate these rare circulating tumor cells from whole blood.” Zhang said. “The ultimate goal is to deliver a highly sensitive, reliable, affordable, and portable cancer screening platform with high throughput. The next step – bringing the technology from lab bench to clinics is a big challenging step, but is also the most rewarding step.
This work has the potential to revolutionize cancer risk assessment, cancer management, and increase the cure rate for cancers such as breast cancer, lung cancer, and prostate cancer.” This paper is published on Annals of Biomedical Engineering (DOI: 10.1007/s10439-015-1427-z).
About the author
Dr. Peng Chen received his PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He is now working as a postdoc research associate at the Center for Applied NanoBioscience and Medicine at the University of Arizona. His research interests include (1) miniaturized microfluidic system for detection and analysis of rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs), and (2) vertical flow paper based microfluidic device as point-of-need multiplex diagnostic and surveillance tool for bio-threat detection. He has published 10 peer-reviewed journal papers and 10 conference proceedings. He now serves the editorial board of Scientific Reports (Nature publishing group). Email: [email protected]
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REFERENCE
Inkjet-Print Micromagnet Array on Glass Slides for Immunomagnetic Enrichment of Circulating Tumor Cells. Peng Chen1, Yu-Yen Huang2, Gauri Bhave1, Kazunori Hoshino3, Xiaojing Zhang4,5. Ann Biomed Eng. 2016;44(5):1710-20.
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1Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
2Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA.
3Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA.
4Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
5Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA. [email protected].
[/expand] Annals of Biomedical Engineering [/et_pb_text][et_pb_accordion admin_label=”Accordion” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”] [et_pb_accordion_item title=”Show Affiliations”]
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
2Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA.
3Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA.
4Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
5Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA. [email protected].
[/et_pb_accordion_item] [/et_pb_accordion][et_pb_team_member admin_label=”Person” name=”Prof. John Zhang” position=”Professor at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, and a Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)” image_url=”https://medicineinnovates.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/john_zhang-medicine-innovates.jpg” animation=”off” background_layout=”light” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]
Prof. John Zhang, Ph.D., is a Professor at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, and a Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and was a Research Scientist at MIT. His key contribution is in developing miniature medical systems to improve global health, through innovations in bio-inspired nanomaterials, lab-on-chip design, and advanced nanofabrication technologies for probing complex biological networks critical to human development and diseases such as cancer.
He received the Wallace Coulter Foundation Early Career Award for developing handheld microphotonic imaging scanners and microsystems for early oral cancer detection; NSF CAREER award for the invention of plasmonic scanning probes design for controlled perturbation and imaging at sub-cellular level; and DARPA Young Faculty Award for patterning plasmonic surface on MEMS for biomarker sensing applications.
He has published over 120 peer reviewed papers and proceedings, presented over 45 invited seminars worldwide, and filed over 60 US and international patents. He is an alumnus of NAE Frontiers of Engineering programs, an Associate Editor forBiomedical Microdevices, IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, and has published a textbook for undergraduates titled “Molecular Sensors and Nanodevices: Principles, Designs and Applications in Biomedical Engineering”. Email: [email protected]
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