Aniruddh Sarkar, Ph.D.*
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Harvard Medical School

Wednesday, March 6, 2019
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Whitaker Building, 3115

Videoconference:
Emory: Health and Sciences Research Building, E160
Georgia Tech: TEP, stream from your PC (no conf. room)
https://bluejeans.com/809850842

“Tiny Tools to Fight Big Diseases – Micro-/Nano-Systems for Discovery,
Diagnosis and Therapy”

ABSTRACT

Individual functional building blocks of life exist and interact at the micrometer to nanometer length scales. This creates a unique opportunity for exploiting microscale and nanoscale physical phenomena to develop technology for precision biology and medicine. Micro/nano-engineered devices and systems offer high sensitivity and resolution in analyzing and manipulating biological entities while also achieving automation and high throughput at a low cost. These advantages drive applications ranging from basic discovery science to diagnostics and therapy in the clinic.

In this talk, I will highlight the development of a few such micro-/nano-fabricated devices and systems and their applications including: a) In-situ single cell proteomics: We developed microscale electrical, hydrodynamic, and mechanical confinement techniques to achieve 103-106-fold physical enhancement in sensitivity of bioassays without modifying assay chemistry. As an example application of these techniques, I will discuss the development of an integrated microfluidic probe for direct measurement and manipulation of single cells from tissue or tissue culture platforms. This enables novel experiments furthering the understanding of the ubiquitous yet unexplained non-genetic cell-to-cell heterogeneity observed in complex diseases such as cancer. b) Systems serology on chip: We developed integrated multiplexed electrical detection and microfluidic sample preparation techniques for discovery and detection of novel immune correlates as biomarkers of disease state. This enables accurate yet inexpensive and minimally invasive diagnosis of a variety of diseases and is especially valuable for infectious disease diagnostics in resource-poor settings. As an example application of this, I will discuss the discovery of antibody glycosylation-based biomarkers for Tuberculosis (TB) and their detection in a portable point-of-care system.

BIOGRAPHY

Aniruddh Sarkar is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. He is also a visiting research scientist at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from where he received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Earlier, he received his bachelors and masters degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in India. His research interests are at the intersection of electrical engineering with biology and medicine with a specific current focus on utilizing micro- and nano-technology and electronics to build tools to further the prevention, diagnosis and therapy of human disease.

Host:  Edward Botchwey