Noah Malmstadt's Biography

Noah Malmstadt, Professor, Mork Family Dept. of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, University of Southern California

Noah Malmstadt is Professor at the University of Southern California. He received a BS in Chemical Engineering from Caltech and a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Washington. Following postdoctoral work at UCLA, he joined the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at USC in 2007. Malmstadt is the recipient of a 2012 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award. His research focuses on microfluidic strategies to facilitate material fabrication and biophysical analysis. He has pioneered the integration of ionic liquids as solvents in droplet microreactors and the application of microfluidic systems to synthesizing biomimetic cell membranes. Microfluidic analytical techniques he has developed include methods for measuring the permeability of cell membranes to druglike molecules and techniques for measuring ionic currents through membrane proteins.

3D-Printed Microfluidics For Automation of Large-Library Molecular Selection Against Cancer Targets

Wednesday, 19 June 2019 at 11:00

Add to Calendar ▼2019-06-19 11:00:002019-06-19 12:00:00Europe/London3D-Printed Microfluidics For Automation of Large-Library Molecular Selection Against Cancer TargetsLab-on-a-Chip and Microfluidics Europe 2019 in Rotterdam, The NetherlandsRotterdam, The NetherlandsSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

Diagnosing and treating cancer requires having a reliable set of affinity reagents that can specifically and strongly bind to cancer-related protein targets. These reagents are the necessary molecular tools that will enable next-generation technologies for studying, diagnosing, and fighting cancer. Current approaches to producing such reagents, however, are unreliable, expensive, and slow. mRNA display is a molecular selection technology that is uniquely capable of searching libraries of more than a trillion unique compounds to develop ultrahigh affinity reagents against cancer-relevant targets. While this technology has an impressive demonstrated track record of producing such reagents, it has so far been limited to the laboratory scale.

We have built a microfluidic platform that automates the key steps of mRNA display, allowing it to be deployed in a high-throughput fashion. The system is based on modular components manufactured by 3D printing. This manufacturing approach minimizes the cost of the system, allows for rapid design iterations, and facilitates complex fluid routing in three dimensions. The modular architecture isolates the various steps of mRNA display into distinct physical and logical locations. These steps include selection of mRNA display library members that bind to a target, photoligation of the encoded mRNA library to puromycin constructs for peptide generation, sample optical interrogation for quantification of results, and various oligonucleotide processing reactions. Physical isolation allows for modules that are sensitive to surface adhesion to be disposable while the rest of the system can be reused. We have demonstrated the performance of this modular microfluidic system in the selection of molecules for binding multiple cancer-related target proteins. This approach will eventually facilitate the use of mRNA display by non-expert uses: an laboratory that can produce a cancer target protein will be able to simply input this protein into the system and in a matter of hours generate a molecule that binds the target with extraordinarily high affinity.

Add to Calendar ▼2019-06-18 00:00:002019-06-19 00:00:00Europe/LondonLab-on-a-Chip and Microfluidics Europe 2019Lab-on-a-Chip and Microfluidics Europe 2019 in Rotterdam, The NetherlandsRotterdam, The NetherlandsSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

Corporate Sponsors