Advances in health and medicine increasingly rely on micro- and nanoscale technologies that enable precise manipulation and quantitative measurement of biological systems. Microfluidic technologies provide a powerful foundation for addressing these needs, underpinning applications that span fundamental cell biology to clinically relevant therapies.
In this presentation, I will explore micro- and nanoscale technologies that combine acoustics and microfluidics to address problems in diagnostics, drug delivery, and biologics manufacturing. I will showcase several noteworthy examples, including (1) acoustic separation and detection of nanoscale biomarkers for cancer diagnostics; (2) microfluidic approaches for the engineering and characterization of drug delivery vehicles, including extracellular vesicles and lipid nanoparticles; and (3) single-cell biophysical profiling integrated with machine learning to monitor and optimize the manufacturing of complex biologics. These tools hold immense promise for accelerating biomedical research and point toward exciting directions that my lab will explore aimed at advancing cell and gene therapies.
