Steve Soper's Biography

Steve Soper, Foundation Distinguished Professor, Director, Center of BioModular Multi-Scale System for Precision Medicine, The University of Kansas

Prof. Soper is currently a Foundation Distinguished Professor in Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Prof. Soper also holds an appointment at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Ulsan, South Korea, where he is a World Class University Professor. He is also serving as a Science Advisor for a number of major worldwide companies. Prof. Soper is currently on the Editorial Board for Scientific Reports and Journal of Micro- and Nanosystems.

As a result of his efforts, Prof. Soper has secured extramural funding totaling >$103M and has published over 265 peer-reviewed manuscripts (h index = 71) and is the author of 20 patents. He is also the founder of a startup company, BioFluidica, which is marketing devices for the isolation and enumeration of circulating tumor cells. His list of awards includes Chemical Instrumentation by the American Chemical Society, the Benedetti-Pichler Award for Microchemistry, Fellow of the AAAS, Fellow of Applied Spectroscopy, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, R&D 100 Award, Distinguished Masters Award at LSU and Outstanding Scientist/Engineer in the state of Louisiana in 2001. Finally, Prof. Soper has granted 60 PhDs and 6 MS degrees to students under his mentorship. He currently heads a group of 20 researchers.

Developing Tools For Disease Diagnostics: From Cancer to COVID-19

Thursday, 6 October 2022 at 12:00

Add to Calendar ▼2022-10-06 12:00:002022-10-06 13:00:00Europe/LondonDeveloping Tools For Disease Diagnostics: From Cancer to COVID-19Lab-on-a-Chip and Microfluidics Asia 2022 in Tokyo, JapanTokyo, JapanSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

We have been developing tools for the diagnosis of a variety of diseases. The commonality in these tools is that they consist of microfluidic devices made from plastics via injection molding. Thus, our tools can be mass produced at low-cost that facilitates bench-to-bed side transition and point-of-care testing (POCT). We have also been generating novel assays focused on using liquid biopsy samples. Recently, we have focused on developing plastic nanofluidic devices, which provides unique opportunities for single-molecule analyses. In this presentation, I will talk about the evolution of our fabrication efforts of plastic-based microfluidic and nanofluidic devices as well their surface modification to make the devices biocompatible. Then, I will discuss several applications of these devices and the assays for selection of rare liquid biopsy targets from clinical samples and molecular analysis of their contents to help guide disease management. I will use two examples to highlight the utility of these devices: (1) Analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) using microfluidics for the diagnosis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC); and (2) detection of COVID-19 using POCT from saliva samples. PDAC is a deadly disease with a 5-year survival rate <5%. A microfluidic chip for CTC selection consisted of channels surface-decorated with antibodies that could select CTCs directly from whole blood and enumerate them to determine response to therapy or subject them to next generation sequencing to determine a patient’s ability to accept certain treatments. The COVID-19 diagnostic accepts saliva samples and searches for SARS-CoV-2 particles and counts the number of virus particles selected using a label-free approach; nano-Coulter Counter chip (nCC). Both steps of the assay were carried out using a microfluidic and nanofluidic device, respectively. The chips were integrated to a control board to allow for sample processing automation with results in <20 min.

Add to Calendar ▼2022-10-06 00:00:002022-10-07 00:00:00Europe/LondonLab-on-a-Chip and Microfluidics Asia 2022Lab-on-a-Chip and Microfluidics Asia 2022 in Tokyo, JapanTokyo, JapanSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

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