My Name is Newly John and I'm at Department of Biomedical Engineering at University of California Irvine. My research involves developing novel biomedical devices and microfluidic devices for neuroscience and stem cell research. Bios And micro foot is a relatively young discipline that has developed over the last maybe five to 10 years, and it uses a lot of the techniques and expertise developed for the integrated circuit industry.
So what we are doing is using the miniaturization methods and approaches developed for integrated circuits to manufacture small devices with small channels and reservoirs, and use that for cell biology applications. Traditionally, most of the biological experiments have been performed on a Petri dish scale. So for the cells, when looking at a cell, which is about 10 microns in diameter, you know, basically we have a small cell that's immersed in a big volume of liquid.
Using microfluidic devices, we can control the environments around the cell. The cell cell communication, as well as cell soluble factor influence much more precisely than just doing the experiment on a larger scale in a Petri dish. So the, these new developments in micro fluidic brings a lot of promise with control and reproducibility over conventional methods.
Our research in using microfluidic devices for cell migration research involves developing new devices that can maintain a steady gradient of soluble factors over the cells, such that we can study how the cells respond to different growth factors or chemokines. This involves in precise control of fluid flow over a group of cells or cells, which is very important and fundamental in most of the biological processes such as morphogenesis, cancer metastasis, and immune cell response. Similar To those microfluidic devices for generating gradients, the devices for culturing neurons and especially com neurons is a new development in microfluidics.
With these devices, we are able to isolate and purify axonal fractions and also obtain very polarized structures. In this case, compared to conventional assays such as void and chambers, where it was very, it was sometimes difficult to prevent leakage and other experimental difficulties. Micro fluidic devices offer overall more reproducible results and at the same time provide optically compatible platform where we can do high resolution microscopy.
And this device is being used to perform experiments to look at how axonal transport is happening. So using this new microfluidic neuronal culture device, a lot of our collaborators across the country are looking at different neurodegenerative models such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and A LSI Was very fortunate to have excellent collaborators in the neuroscience and the pathology department here at uc Irvine. I collaborate closely with Car Kaman Stewart and Ed Monki and Lisa Flanagan's lab.
Our collaborations involve in meeting regularly and trying to find out what are the problems that the biologists are facing. And in, in these regular meetings, we find out that although there have been conventional tools available, there are still a lot of app applications where us as biomedical engineers can play a significant role in, in improvement and understanding of this biomedical research. So, for example, our collaboration with Dr.Monki and Dr.Flanagan's lab over the last five years has been very productive.
First, our students can learn how to work closely with, with groups, with different scientific disciplines. And at the same time, we have been fortunate to tackle problems in stem cell biology. For example, culturing and differentiating stem cells within microfluidic devices offered a fresh perspective on how stem cells behave in gradient A morphogen such as BMP.
And I think this type of collaboration will be an important part of future science as more and more engineers get interested in biomedical research. And at the same time the needs for new tools with new capabilities from the neuroscience and other bioscience field grow, I expect that there's gonna be a lot of fruitful collaborations that will really push the field of biomedical research. Further, I Think the field of microfluidics and biomes is an exciting phase.
There are are a lot of new applications that's being developed basically every day. I expect that in five years there will be a lot more biologists using these type of devices for daily research, for routine experiments, for cell migration or other special purposes. Because these devices offer a lot of advantages over conventional Petri culture based methods, I think the imagination is a limit for developing new types of applications.
And I, I believe close collaboration with the biologists will result in new types of devices, which will play significant role in future advancement of biomedical research.
