Webinar #9: Magnetophoresis-based technologies for point-of-care diagnosis and complex material fabrication
Biography:
Dr. Savaş Taşoğlu is an Associate Professor at Boğaziçi University Biomedical Institute. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from METU (2006) and Koç University (2008), and his doctorate from UC Berkeley (2011) Mechanical Engineering Department. He completed his post-doctoral studies at Harvard Medical School (2011-2014). Dr. Taşoğlu works on biomedical device development, tissue engineering, and microfluidic systems. He has recently received the Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellowship, Newton Transforming Systems Through Partnership, Tübitak 2232 International Leading Researchers Award, BAGEP and Science Heroes Association Young Scientist awards. Researches American National Institutes of Health (NIH), American Heart Association (AHA), American Science Foundation NSF I-Corps, CT Innovations Foundation, Innovation Quest (iQ) Foundation , and by the Wolff New Venture Competition.
Abstract:
Complex functional materials with 3D micro or nano-scale dynamic compositional features are prevalent in nature. However, the generation of 3D functional materials composed of both soft and rigid microstructures, each programmed by shape and composition, is still an unsolved challenge. In my presentation, I will first describe two magnetic methods to code complex materials in three-dimensions with tunable structural, morphological, and chemical features. We demonstrate unique capabilities in fabrication of soft systems with heterogeneity in material properties such as porosity, elastic modulus, and mass density; then in bottom-up tissue engineering; and finally, levitational and selective assembly of microcomponents.
In the second part of the presentation, I will describe another application of magnetophoresis-based approach on cell-based diagnosis, specifically on sickle cell disease diagnosis. Recent technological advancements have made strides in shifting clinical diagnostics from large centralized laboratories to the point of care, thus widely increasing the accessibility to such diagnostic procedures worldwide. For sickle cell disease diagnostics, many current technologies require costly equipment and specialized training while others rely on subjective interpretation of results and can be vulnerable to user error. I will present a portable, self-contained device fully independent from a dedicated microscope to levitate particles of interest, image them using an embedded low-cost optical system and a camera module and process the captured images in order to estimate the densities of the particles. This approach separates, images, and analyzes blood cells based on their densities and provides a quantitative diagnosis of sickle cell disease. The device is user-friendly and inexpensive, offering a great potential for rapid, on-site sample analysis.
