26.04.2018 11:00 - 26.04.2018 12:00

Novel Microfluidic Systems for Biomedical Research


Abstract

Microfluidics, a technology characterized by the engineered manipulation of fluids at the micro-scale, has shown considerable promise in point-of-care diagnostics and clinical research. Microfluidic platforms are creating powerful tools for cell biologists to control the complete cellular microenvironment, leading to new questions and new discoveries. By simply miniaturizing macroscopic systems and taking advantage of the possibility of massive parallel processing, some microfluidic chips enable high-throughput biological experiments such as cell sorting, single cell analysis, PCR, ELISA and chromatography. This revolution promises to bring with it better ways to detect cancer and other diseases, as well as a more efficient drug-discovery process. Over the past 7 years, I have developed a number of microfluidic systems which are translated into practice. In this seminar, I will describe our recent efforts in development of new miniaturized systems for particle and cell separation, suitable for different industries. I will show case our novel systems for high-throughput cell rare cell sorting (circulating tumour cells (CTCs), circulating fetal cells, and circulating stem cells) and their clinical utilities. I will present some of our efforts for large-scale manufacturing and enrichment of hybridoma cells inside perfusion bioreactores for drug development and therapeutic applications. In addition, I will present some of our new 2D and 3D microfluidics systems for single cell analysis, stem cell research and drug screening.

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Biography:

Dr Warkiani is a senior lecturer in the School of Biomedical Engineering, UTS, Sydney, Australia. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Nanyang Technological University (NTU, Singapore), and undertook postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA). He is also a member of Institute for Biomedical Materials & Devices (IBMD) and Center for Health Technologies (CHT) at UTS, a visiting scientist at the Garvan Institute for Biomedical Research as well as Translational Cancer Research Network (TCRN). Dr Warkiani’s current research activities focus on three key areas of (i) Microfluidics involving the design and development of novel microfluidic systems for particle and cell sorting (e.g., circulating tumor cells, fetal cells & stem cells) for diagnostic and therapeutic applications, (ii) Bio-MEMS involving the fabrication and characterization of novel 3D lab-on-a-chip systems to model physiological functions of tissues and organs, and (iii) 3D Printing involving the design and development of novel miniaturized systems (e.g., micro-mixers, micro-cyclones) for basic and applied research.

Group webpage: www.warkianilab.com