Abstract

Tracking Tumor Extracellular Vesicles Using Microfluidics

Shannon Stott, Assistant Professor, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School

Advances in microfluidic technologies and molecular profiling have propelled the rapid growth and interest in achieving a ‘liquid biopsy’ in cancer. The ability to manipulate fluidics flows towards the goal of interrogating millions of particles per second provides a significant advantage over other technological approaches. Through a collaborative effort between bioengineers, biologists, and clinicians, my laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital has developed microfluidic devices to isolate and characterize these EVs from whole blood. For this presentation, data will be presented on our effort to use our devices to serially track EVs in glioblastoma patients over time. Further, we will share details on some of our latest technologies in development. Through the microfluidic isolation of blood based biomarkers from patients, our goal is to obtain complementary data to the current standard of care to help better guide treatment and identify new biomarkers and putative therapeutic targets.