Abstract

Microfluidic Technologies for the Isolation and Characterization of Extracellular Vesicles For Lung Cancer Theranostics

Sunitha Nagrath, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

The extracellular vesicle (EV) has emerged as one of the diagnostic means of cancer through liquid biopsy. So far, ultracentrifugation has been accepted as gold standard for EV isolation in spite of its lengthy processing time and low recovery rate. Owing to the recent technological advances in microfluidics, several microfluidic devices for EV isolation have been developed and showed promising with better recovery rate and processing time. Here we present microfluidic based approaches to isolate and profile tumor derived EVs. To demonstrate the harvesting of EVs from specific cells for therapeutic use we have developed a microfluidic based strategy to harvest EVs from Natural Killer (NK) cells in blood circulation. In combination we have developed theranostics application of EVs in lung cancer.