Microvasculature on a Chip: Blood Vessel-Mimics for Probing Micro-Circulation Physiology
Abstract: Microfluidics and microfabrication have emerged to be highly effective tools towards probing physiologically complex phenomena in artificially engineered platforms outside the human body, centered around the phenomenal advancements in ‘organ on a chip’ and ‘human body on a chip’ technologies, including for cancer studies. It is an established fact that in the advanced stages of cancer, the tumor cells successfully proliferate through the tiny blood-carrying capillaries of the human body, resulting in the establishment of cancerous traits at locations that are far distant from the primary site of the disease – a phenomenon known as metastasis. Despite outstanding advancements in the convergence domains of life sciences, physical and chemical sciences and engineering in recent times, the potentially critical role played by the unique flexibility of human microvasculature and the interplay of their unique structural and functional aspects towards orchestrating such lethal aspects of life threatening diseases remain to be largely underemphasized thus far, which is the central theme of the talk. By utilizing on-chip characterization methodology, I will explain a unique way by which cancer cells may undergo abnormal shape adaptation through dynamic alteration of their membrane fluidity, in an effort to survive in a stressful micro-environment. Proceeding further forward, I will address deformability as a second hallmark of human body microvasculature and discusses a frugal approach of fabricating biologically mimicking channels using gel-like materials for assessing unique collective dynamics of red blood cells. Finally, I will demonstrate dynamics of magnetically targeted nanoparticles in a deformable microfluidic environment. These studies are expected to advance the development of physiologically-replicating disease models on an engineered biochip, as well as facilitate drug development and expedite screening with minimization of animal and human trials.
About the speaker: Prof. Dr. Suman Chakraborty is an Institute Chair Professor and the former Dean of Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy and Head of the School of Medical Science & Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. Suman Chakraborty is a Sir J C Bose National Fellow, and Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; and the Indian National Science Academy; Indian National Academy of Engineering; Indian National Academy of Sciences, Indian Academy of Sciences. He is an internationally recognized pioneer in disruptive diagnostic-technologies for resource-limited settings. His notable device inventions include: portable disc to perform a Complete-Blood-Count test, hand-held blood-perfusion imaging device for early screening of oral cancer, and a new Piecewise Isothermal Nucleic Acid test for infectious disease detection at point-of-care. Suman is the inventor of ‘Paper and Pencil Microfluidics’ technology – a new class of electrically-manipulative miniaturized devices that does not require any sophisticated fabrication-facility. He leads a National-level Research and Technology Development Hub on Affordable Healthcare, where his own innovated products are being manufactured by small-scale enterprises. This hub is functional as techno-socio-economic lifeline, empowering rural women with the essential skill-set of delivering primary healthcare-support to the last-mile, and rejuvenating rural livelihood via facilitating sustainable enterprise formation for the unemployed. Prof. Chakraborty is a recipient of numerous prestigious accolades including the Infosys Prize in the Category of Engineering and Computer Science, Infosys Science Foundation (2022) Awarded Santi Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize by the Govt. of India (2013) and recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (2005).