Labs, Cells and Organs on a Chip

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Event details

Date 01.09.2016
Hour 12:00
Speaker Prof. Albert van den Berg, University of Twente, Twente (NL)
Location
Category Conferences - Seminars
joint BIO- and MICROENGINEERING SEMINAR
 (part of IMT Distinguished Lecture Series)

Abstract:
The recent rapid developments in microfluidics technologies has enabled the realization of miniaturized laboratories. These Labs-on-a-Chip will play an important role in future medicine, both in point-of-care devices for drug or biomarker monitoring, as well as in early diagnostic devices. We developed a pre-filled ready-to-use capillary electrophoresis platform for measuring ions in blood. It is used to monitor lithium in finger-prick blood of manic-depressive patients, but can also be used for measuring calcium in blood for prevention of milk fever, or for measuring creatinine in blood or sodium in urine for early detection of ESRD. Microfluidics can also be exploited to manipulate and experiment with cells on chip. We have developed a microsystem for sperm analysis and selection for artificial insemination, where we can electrically detect and sort healthy sperm cells. Using microdevices we have been able to electroporate and transfect genes into individual cells, and a microdroplet platform was used for encapsulation of single cells in microdroplets, ordering of these microdroplets and 1:1 fusion of these droplets to form hybridomas. We believe this is a very powerful new tool that can be used for high-throughput single cell experimentation. Apart from diagnostic and cell manipulation devices, microfluidic devices are increasingly used to realise advance disease and organ-models, as illustrated by the blood-brain barrier chip and a blood vessel on a chip to study atherosclerosis.

Bio:
Albert van den Berg received his MSc in applied physics in 1983, and his PhD in 1988 both at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. From 1988-1993 he worked in Neuchatel, Switzerland, at the CSEM and the University (IMT) on miniaturized chemical sensors. In 1998 he was appointed as part-time professor “Biochemical Analysis Systems”, and later in 2000 as full professor on Miniaturized Systems for (Bio)Chemical Analysis in the faculty of Electrical Engineering and part of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology. In 1994 he initiated together with Prof. Bergveld the international MicroTAS conference series. He published over 400 peer reviewed publications (H=52) a.o. in Science, Nature, PNAS, NanoLetters etc. He received several honors and awards such as Simon Stevin (2002), two ERC Advanced (2008, 2015) and three ERC Proof of Concept (2011, 2013, 2016) grants, Simon Stevin award (engineering sciences), Spinoza prize (2009), Honorary University Professorship (Twente, 2010), Distinguished Professor at South China Normal University (SNCU, 2012) and board member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW) (2011-2016). In 2014 he was appointed scientific director of the MIRA institute for Biomedical Engineering.