Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Seminar Presentation: 10:00am - 11:00am
SME Room 248
“Pushing and Pulling Cancer Particles - Electrokinetic Recovery of Nanoparticles for Enhanced Disease Detection and Improving Treatment”
Dr. Stuart Ibsen, PhD
Associate Professor
Biomedical Engineering Department
The Knight Cancer Institute’s Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center (CEDAR)
Oregon Health and Science University
Abstract
Extracellular vesicle (EV) nanoparticles secreted into body fluids carry a wide range of biomarkers from their parent cells making them particularly important for cancer diagnostics. However, these particles are not currently used clinically because traditional recovery methods are too time consuming and labor intensive. To address this challenge, our lab is developing new techniques that use the electrokinetic phenomena of dielectrophoresis to quickly and easily pull nanoparticles straight from plasma, saliva, and pancreatic juice to enable accurate biomarker quantification. We studied the physics of how an embedded microelectrode array within a microfluidic device can impart a dielectrophoretic force on target particles, pushing or pulling them to desired regions of the array. This enables quantification of protein content, detection of cancer-related protease activity, and PCR amplification of cell-free DNA nanoparticles for oncogenic KRAS mutations, all of which is done on-chip. Combining these orthogonal biomarkers provides a comprehensive analysis of a patient’s EVs which can inform treatment decisions as well as account for a greater amount of the variability seen across the cancer patient population, improving test performance compared to individual biomarkers. We also recover additional nanoparticle types including outer membrane vesicles secreted by bacteria, fragments of cellular organelles, and synthetic drug delivery vehicles. We demonstrated that EV biomarkers perform better at detecting early-stage pancreatic cancer compared to invasive tissue biopsy of the pancreas. An additional focus of my lab is to develop treatment strategies for these localized early-stage tumors to reduce therapeutic side effects. This involves the development of prodrugs of chemotherapeutics and immunotherapies that are activated locally by highlighting the early-stage tumor region with a triggering wavelength of light. Together, this work shows development of new technologies with characteristics necessary for clinical translation to spatially manipulate particles and molecules to detect early-stage cancer and provide interventions spatially targeted to early-stage disease.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Stuart Ibsen is an Associate Professor at Oregon Health and Science University with a joint appointment between the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center. He holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from UC San Diego and a second Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Hawaii. He conducted postdocs at the Salk Institute, the UCSD Moores Cancer Center, and University College London where his work spun out a startup company. His combined background offers a unique perspective that drives his lab’s overall scientific mission to develop methods to detect and treat early-stage cancer. His work has been featured on 9 journal covers, including the Top Cited 2021-2022 Article in the journal Electrophoresis, and is the subject of 4 patents. He was awarded the prestigious NIH R37 Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award and has been awarded additional research support from the NSF, the Pacific Northwest Center for Cryo-EM, The Knight Cancer Institute, The Brenden-Colson Center for Pancreatic Care, and an industrial grant with General Electric. He has served on the NIH Cancer Biomarker study section, is a member of the NIH Pancreatic Cancer Detection Consortium, has co-directed and organized special international conference sessions, and is an elected member of the organizing committee leadership for the international Dielectrophoresis Conference.