Research
Rare/Single Cell Analysis
Our work focuses on the development and application of new technology platforms that allow single cell level information to be collected on billions of cells with a high level of throughput. We have applied our approaches to cell profiling to the development of assays for liquid biopsy, disease screening, cell therapy development and therapeutic target discovery.
Cell Therapy Development
The ability to sort through billions of cells allows us to identify cellular subpopulations with elevated potency profiles and eliminate potentially harmful cells. Our approach allows the identification of very rare cells and enables deep profiling of therapeutic phenotypes.
Featured Publications
“Efficient recovery of potent tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes through quantitative immunomagnetic cell sorting.”
Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2022, doi: 10.1038/s41551-021-00820-y
“Ultrasensitive and Rapid Quantification of Rare Tumorigenic Stem Cells in hPSC-Derived Cardiomyocyte Populations.”
Science Advances, 2020, 6, eaay7629.
Therapeutic Target Discovery
Identifying rare cells in CRISPR-edited libraries allows us to find regulators of disease phenotypes and discover new molecular mechanisms that can be used for therapeutic discovery.
Featured Publications
“High-Throughput Genome-Wide Phenotypic Screening via Immunomagnetic Cell Sorting.”
Nature Biomed. Eng. 2019, 3, 796-805.
Liquid Biopsy and Cancer Diagnostics
By searching for rare tumor and immune cells in the bloodstream, we can extract signatures that provide molecular-level details relevant to patient staging and treatment. This capability can be used to develop “liquid biopsy” approaches for noninvasive cancer testing as well as screening and diagnostic approaches that analyze rare cells.
Featured Publications
“Tracking the Expression of Therapeutic Protein Targets in Rare Cells by Antibody-Mediated Nanoparticle Labelling and Magnetic Sorting.”
Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2021, 5, 41-52.
"Single Cell mRNA Cytometry via Sequence-Specific Nanoparticle Clustering and Trapping."
Nature Chemistry, 2018, 10, 489-495.
"Tracking the Dynamics of Circulating Tumor Cell Phenotypes Using Nanoparticle-Mediated Magnetic Ranking.”
Nature Nanotechnology, 2017, 12, 274-282.