BioMEMS & Nanotechnology

The rapidly evolving field of BioMEMS and Nanotechnology provides several diverse lines of investigation. Aaron J. Fleischman, Ph.D., and Shuvo Roy, Ph.D., use microelectronics, microfabrication and micromachining technologies as enabling technology to improve medical diagnostics and therapies by reducing device size and cost. Their collaborative studies involve engineering micro-/nanometer-sized features for tissue engineering, protein analyses, assays, and cell interrogation; among the applications being developed are miniaturized versions of drug delivery systems, transducers for ultrasound images, and in situ telemetrically monitored pressure/temperature sensors for minimally invasive surgery/follow-up. Maciej Zborowski, Ph.D., investigates magnetic flow cell sorting for various diagnostic and therapeutic applications, such as rapid screening for cancer cells in blood or blood-forming stem-cell transplantation (with CCF’s Taussig Cancer Center) and in model cell systems of human peripheral lymphocytes, cultured cell lines, and samples donated by patients, such as bone marrow. Continuous magnetic flow sorting is a high-speed, gentle process, with high specificity and high recovery of sorted fractions via cell tagging (e.g., via an iron-doped polymeric nanoparticle developed with Bar-Ilan University in Israel). Cell Tracking Velocimetry, developed with the Ohio State University, can analyze individual cell velocities of hundreds of cells at a time, yielding data about the population average and dispersion, based on quadrupole and dipole magnetic fields, which can sort some 10 million cells/second with 70% recovery of target cells and be optimized for increased fractionation resolution and speed. P. Stephen Williams, Ph.D., builds mathematical models of field-flow fractionation using quadrupole magnets. His work informs the design of devices for cell separation.