MicroTAS 2024 | 13-17 October 2024

Plenary Speakers

NANOPHOTONIC LAB-ON-A-CHIP SYSTEMS FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS
Hatice Altug
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), SWITZERLAND

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Emerging healthcare needs and initiatives are demanding breakthrough advancements in diagnostic and bioanalytical tools. Towards this goal, our lab is developing next-generation nanophotonic lab-on-a-chip systems offering high performance in precision, response time, integration, throughput portability and affordability. This talk will presentsome of our recent works such as an AI-aided optofluidic mid-infrared sensor capable of differentiating misfolded forms of disease proteins, nanophotonic single-cell microarrays that can enable high-throughput spatiotemporal monitoring of extracellular secretion and biosensing approaches for long-term continuous monitoring of biomolecules.

TOOLS TO ANALYZE VERY FEW, AND VERY MANY MOLECULES
Ulf Landegren
Uppsala Universitet, SWEDEN

BUILDING VASCULARIZED KIDNEY TISSUES FOR DRUG TESTING, DISEASE MODELING, AND THERAPEUTIC USE
Jennifer A. Lewis
Harvard University, USA

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My talk will describe our recent efforts to generate vascularized organoids in vitro that exhibit enhanced maturation and function for both drug testing and disease modeling. Next, I will describe the scalable generation of vascularized organ-specific tissues for therapeutic use via sacrificial writing in functional tissue (SWIFT). Though broadly applicable, I will highlight our recent work on engineering human kidney tissues.

ORGANIC NANOPARTICLES FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS
Bin Liu
National University of Singapore, SINGAPORE

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Organic electronic materials play important roles in modern electronic devices such as light-emitting diodes, solar cells, and transistors. Upon interaction with light, these optically active materials can undergo different photophysical and photochemical pathways, providing unique opportunities for optimization of light emission via radiative decay, heat generation via nonradiative decay, and singlet oxygen production or phosphorescence emission via intersystem crossing, all of which open alternative opportunities for their applications in sensing, imaging, and therapy. In this talk, we discuss all the pathways that determine the optical properties of high-performance organic electronic materials, focusing on the optimization of each pathway for photogeneration and relaxation of electronic excited states. We further examine nanoparticle (NP) fabrication techniques tailored to macromolecules and small molecules to render them into NPs with optimized size and distribution for biomedical applications and endow organic electronic materials with water dispersibility and biocompatibility. Lastly, we illustrate the in vitro and in vivo applications of some representative organic electronic materials after optimization of each relaxation pathway.

NONINVASIVE PRENATAL AND CANCER DETECTION BY PLASMA DNA ANALYSIS: FROM DREAM TO REALITY
Yuk Ming "Dennis" Lo
Chinese University of Hong Kong, HONG KONG

MICROFLUIDIC TOTAL ANALYSIS SYSTEMS FOR THE SKIN
John A. Rogers
Northwestern University, USA

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Emerging classes of thin, soft microfluidic systems enable capture, storage and on-device chemical analysis of microliter volumes of eccrine sweat as it arrives at the surface of the skin. Several types of these skin-interfaced technologies have appeared in the recent literature, with applications in sports/fitness, health diagnostics and chemical exposure. This talk describes the key ideas and presents some of the most recent device examples.

Hot Topic Keynote Speakers

Artificial Intelligence in Microfluidics

VIRTUAL STAINING OF LABEL-FREE TISSUE USING DEEP LEARNING
Aydogan Ozcan
University of California, Los Angeles, USA

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Deep learning techniques create new opportunities to revolutionize tissue staining methods by digitally generating histological stains using trained neural networks, providing rapid, cost-effective, accurate and environmentally friendly alternatives to standard chemical staining methods. These deep learning-based virtual staining techniques can successfully generate different types of histological stains, including immunohistochemical stains, from label-free microscopic images of unstained samples by using, e.g., autofluorescence microscopy, quantitative phase imaging (QPI) and reflectance confocal microscopy. Similar approaches were also demonstrated for transforming images of an already stained tissue sample into another type of stain, performing virtual stain-to-stain transformations. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of our recent work on the use of deep neural networks for label-free tissue staining, also covering their biomedical applications.

TOWARD PETABYTE-SCALE OPTOFLUIDIC IMAGING CYTOMETRY
Kevin Tsia
University of Hong Kong, HONG KONG

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This talk will discuss the latest frontier of optofluidic imaging cytometry achieving petabyte-scale analysis through the fusion of ultrafast imaging, microfluidics and deep learning. This integration unlocks unprecedented specificity and sensitivity of single-cell morphological profiling that were once inconceivable - offering transformative insights and new cell-based assay strategies for biological research, clinical diagnostics, and drug discovery.

Energy and Environment

CAN MICROFLUIDICS ADDRESS KEY ISSUES IN THE ENVIRONMENT, ENERGY, AND AGRICULTURE?
Chuck Henry
Colorado State University, USA

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There is widespread interest in understanding how human activity affects the world around us as well as the impact of environmental pollution on human health. On one hand, human activity causes significant environmental damage through both point and non-point source pollution with long-term ecological impacts. On the other hand, pollutants in the environment significantly impact human health over the entire globe. Microfluidic devices are positioned to help provide critical data for both problems.

MICROFLUIDICS AS A MODEL FOR ENERGY APPLICATIONS
David A. Weitz
Harvard University, USA

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This talk will describe the use of microfluidic devices as a model for the study of flow in porous media at the pore and multi-pore scale. By combining these devices with confocal microscopy, flow in three-dimensional porous media can be investigated. The talk will describe the properties of multi-phase fluid flow and the effects of polymer solutions on altering the flow. It will also describe flow of fluids when the porous medium is fractured and will detail some of the fundamentals of the fracture.

Organ-on-a-Chip

MICROENGINEERED BIOMIMICRY OF HUMAN PHYSIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS
Dan Huh
University of Pennsylvania, USA

MODELING NEUROLOGICAL DISEASE: UNDERSTANDING THE TRANSPORT MECHANISMS AND PATHWAYS FOR THE CLEARANCE OF AMYLOID BETA FROM THE BRAIN
Roger D. Kamm
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

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Neurodegenerative disease is a major factor inflicting our aging population. Many processes contribute to disease, but one critical factor is the accumulation of toxic protein aggregates in the brain due to either increased cell secretion or impaired clearance. The brain has multiple exit paths for these factors, but the relative importance of each has been difficult to assess. In vitro models can help to elucidate the important egress routes and could help identify new therapeutic approaches.

Wearables and Continuous Sensing

WEARABLE RECONFIGURABLE METAMATERIALS AND ORIGAMI-INSPIRED IMPLANTABLE SENSORS FOR HUMAN-MACHINE INTERFACES
Firat Güder
Imperial College London, UK

WEARABLE SWEAT SENSORS -TOWARDS BIG DATA FOR HUMAN HEALTH
Ali Javey
University of California, Berkeley, USA

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Wearable sensor technologies play a significant role in realizing personalized medicine through continuously monitoring an individual's health state. To this end, human sweat is an excellent candidate for non-invasive monitoring as it contains physiologically rich information. In this talk, I will present our recent advancements on fully-integrated perspiration analysis system that can simultaneously measure sweat rate, metabolites, electrolytes, drugs and heavy metals, as well as the skin temperature to calibrate the sensors' response. Our work bridges the technological gap in wearable biosensors by merging plastic-based sensors that interface with the skin, and silicon integrated circuits consolidated on a flexible circuit board for complex signal processing. This wearable system is used to measure the detailed sweat profile of subjects at rest and engaged in prolonged physical activities, and infer real-time assessment of physiological state of the subjects. Case studies on the correlation of sweat analytes with those of blood and various physiological conditions will be presented, including for applications in dehydration studies, diabetes monitoring, drug metabolism rate studies, and detection and monitoring of cystic fibrosis. Finally, a general roadmap for the technology will be presented, with focus on opportunities and challenges.

Keynote Speakers

DIGITAL PROTEIN DETECTION: HISTORY, IMPACT, AND FUTURE
David C. Duffy
Quanterix, USA

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We will describe digital detection of proteins that has emerged as a key tool for the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of devasting diseases. We will describe how single molecule detection enabled a variety of digital immunoassays that have greatly improved analytical sensitivity to proteins. We will describe how these advances have resulted in the first "blood tests for the brain", and consider how lab-on-a-chip technologies could drive the innovations needed for mass adoption of digital protein methods.

PROGRAMMING BACTERIAL BIOFILMS USING MICROFLUIDICS: FROM MODEL HYDRODYNAMIC GROWTH ENVIRONMENTS TO NEW SUSTAINABLE BIO-ENERGY APPLICATIONS
Jesse Greener
Universtié Laval, CANADA

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Over 80% of bacteria on Earth exist in biofilm form. These structures enhance bacterial viability and virulence, but also hold the potential as living catalytic materials. The key to controlling biofilm growth and catalytic activity is to control environmental cues. This keynote focuses on new purpose-built spectro/electrochemical microflow cells to study biofilms, with a focus on naturally conductive biofilms that are powering emerging sustainable energy and electrosynthesis technologies.

HIGH-THROUGHPUT SCREENING OF BIOMOLECULES AND SINGLE CELLS BY NOVEL BIOCHIPS
Lin Han
Shandong University, CHINA

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The real-time screening of biomolecules and single cells in biochips is extremely important for disease prediction and diagnosis, cellular analysis, and life science research. Biomolecules can provide information about the body of an organism and reflect its physiological state. They primarily include small molecules (sterols, vitamins, hormones, and carbohydrates); monomers (amino acids, nucleotides, and phosphoric acid); and polymers (proteins, nucleic acids, and polysaccharides). Currently, phenotypes, as the physical manifestations of gene function, have attracted considerable interest and have emerged as a focal point of medical research. There is also great interest in intracellular or membrane proteins, which are involved in transcription, translation, metabolism, growth, adhesion, signaling, and other functions, forming the basis of cell structure in single cells. Single-cell secreted proteins primarily include cytokines, growth factors, and hormones, which can mediate cell communication and govern cell, tissue, and organ activity; and secreted proteins that inhibit tumor development or encourage tumor spread. Hence, the monitoring of biomolecules and single cells is crucial in clinical diagnosis, molecular biology, and the early diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

SEVEN O’CLOCK: TIME FOR A NEW METHOD TO CHARACTERIZE INDIVIDUAL EXTRACELLULAR PARTICLES
Tijana Jovanovic-Talisman
City of Hope, USA

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By combining affinity isolation, super-resolution microscopy, and advanced data analysis - including machine learning-based approaches - we developed methods to characterize both the morphology and cargo content of extracellular vesicles. These nanoparticles shed from all cells are excellent biomarker candidates. We applied our methods to model systems and human plasma samples; the approach robustly characterized and classified extracellular vesicles in breast cancer and cardiovascular disease.

AUTONOMOUS FLUIDIC LAB FOR NANOPARTICLE SYNTHESIS
Eugenia Kumacheva
University of Toronto, CANADA

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Multiple applications of metal nanoparticles (NPs) require precise control of their spectroscopic properties, however the identification of reaction conditions for the synthesis of NPs with targeted optical characteristics is a time-consuming and resource-intensive trial-and-error process. Yet, machine learning-assisted fluidic NP synthesis in autonomous labs enables the accelerated exploration of multidimensional chemical spaces. We designed and developed a self-driving lab that integrated a microfluidic segmented flow reactor, in-flow spectroscopic NP characterization, and machine learning for the exploration and optimization of the seven-dimensional chemical space for the photochemical synthesis of metal NPs. By targeting specific spectroscopic NP properties, this self-driving lab successfully identified reaction conditions for the synthesis of different types of metal NPs with selected shapes, morphologies, and compositions. Data analysis provided insight into the role of different parameters of reaction conditions for the synthesis of the specific NP type and the impact of a particular reaction condition on NP quality. The developed fluidic self-driving lab is an effective platform for on-demand synthesis of metal NPs.

MICROFLUIDIC SYNTHESIS OF POLYMERSOMES FOR PROGRAMMING ENZYMATIC REACTION NETWORK
Hyomin Lee
Pohang University of Science and Technology, KOREA

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We utilize droplet microfluidics to synthesize artificial cells-like polymersomes and demonstrate selective molecular transport as well as signal-driven formation and dissolution of coacervates. By exploiting the enhanced stability and distinctive permeability of polymersomes, we program enzymatic reaction networks to realize out-of-equilibrium systems through fuel-driven formation of coacervates followed by autonomous dissolution as well as intercellular communication in heterogeneous cell community.

FUNCTIONAL NANOSURFACED MICROFLUIDICS FOR DIAGNOSTICS
Sara Mahshid
McGill University, CANADA

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Functional microfluidics enable the integration of micro-scale chemical and biological operations for an end-to-end biosensing workflow. We have shown that their synergistic integration with nanostructured sensors leads to diagnostic capabilities deployable across multiple medical fields, including infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and cancer. To this end, we have developed protocols for the facile integration of multiple unit operations to achieve the true realization of such miniaturized systems for biosensing at the point of care.

NOVEL MICROFLUIDIC MODELS OF ATHEROSCLEROSIS AND ATHEROSCLEROSIS
Hang T. Ta
Griffith University, AUSTRALIA

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Atherosclerosis and atherothrombosis are the underlining causes of cardiovascular episodes and major causes of death worldwide. Monocyte recruitment and transmigration are crucial in atherosclerotic plaque development. We have developed 3D models mimicking the development of atherosclerosis and thrombosis under static condition and also under flow condition in microfluidic devices. We have demonstrated that these models could be employed to study disease development, test efficacy of drugs and nanomedicine, and evaluate thrombosis risk and treatment strategies.

3D BIOPRINTING COMPLEX TISSUES
Stephanie Willerth
University of Victoria, CANADA

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This talk will cover recent developments in using a variety of bioprinting techniques to generate complex human tissue models containing multiple cell types.

FUNCTIONALIZATION OF MICROFLUIDICS VIA BOTTOM-UP INTEGRATION FOR UPGRADING DROPLET FORMATION AND BIOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS
Masumi Yamada
Chiba University, JAPAN

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Integration of microstructures created by bottom-up technologies into conventional microfluidic channels enables the functionalization of microfluidics for chemical/biological applications. Here we introduce ultra-high-speed formation of microdroplets using inverse colloidal crystal (ICC) structures incorporated in microfluidic devices, as well as cell culture and manipulation.