Stuart Ibsen, Assistant Professor, The Knight Cancer Institute’s Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center (CEDAR), Oregon Health and Science UniversityMy research group’s overall scientific mission is to develop an understanding of the nanoparticles released by tumors into circulation. This includes the role that cancer phenotypes play in the production of these nanoparticles, how the nanoparticles interact with tissues throughout the body, and how these particles can be used clinically for cancer detection and screening. In order to answer these questions, my goal is to develop high conductance dielectrophoresis (DEP) techniques to recover cancer-derived nanoparticles straight from human plasma for the characterization of their cancer related biomarker payloads. In particular, my research has focused on characterizing their biomarker payloads through immunostaining and PCR based methods. My group brings a unique approach to the field of cancer liquid biopsy through the development of these DEP techniques that are capable of collecting multiple different nanoparticle types simultaneously from the same plasma sample. Our team is committed to enable the use of circulating nanoparticles for clinical diagnosis applications. |