Student Name: Maliha Saleem Bakhshi

Research Topic: Cell-Surface Interaction: Process Modeling and Simulation to Enhance Circulating Tumor Cell Capture in Microfluidic Devices

Supervisor: Dr. Mohsin Rizwan

Current Progress: In-process

Description

In the modern era, technological innovation has progressed at an accelerated pace and has permeated almost every facet of our lives. This is especially true in the area of medicine and health care where new medicines are introduced, and advanced equipment has been developed to improve diagnosis and treatment. Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide. National Cancer Institute states that the number of people living beyond a cancer diagnosis is expected to rise to almost 19 million by 2024. However, researchers are trying hard to come up with a generalized remedy. Most of the times cancer is not diagnosed and treated until tumor cells have metastasized throughout the body. Available conventional cancer therapies are limited in their success once a tumor has spread beyond its origin. So, detection of cancer at an early stage implies that current or future therapies will have a higher probability of cure. It has been found that disease diagnosis, monitoring, and personalized cancer therapy can be done by keeping an account of CTCs. Detection, isolation, and assessment of rare CTCs (a non-invasive marker) will lead to more effective treatment. Different techniques have been introduced for CTC identification. Detection, isolation, and assessment of rare CTCs (a non-invasive marker) will lead to more effective treatment. Microfluidic systems based on either capillaries or microchips made it possible to do analysis directly from blood. These microfluidic devices are low power and comprise integrated analysis systems at a low unit cost. Therefore, microfluidic devices equipped with particle separation methods can be used for better cancer cell isolation and detection.

This research is an effort to explore the interaction between the cell membrane and the surface adhesion process, surface roughness, and other parameters to maximize the capture efficiency. A new device design is presented with improved isolation efficiency. Higher capture efficiency in CTC isolation devices means improved chances of earlier diagnosis of cancer (with a smaller concentration of CTC in the blood) which is a crucial parameter towards the successful treatment.

Publications

  • Saleem, B. M., Muhammad, A., Martinez-Enriquez, A. M., & Escalada-Imaz, G. (2010, November). A Rule Based System for Reliability Centered Maintenance. In 2010 Ninth Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 57-62). IEEE.
  • Bakhshi, M. S., Muhammad, A., Martinez-Enriquez, A. M., & Escalada-Imaz, G. (2011). A hybrid system for reliability centered maintenance 1. International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems, 8(4), 213-224.