Microfluidic Cell Engineering for Precision Medicine

Abraham “Abe” Lee, PhD
Professor, Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine
Director, NSF I/UCRC Center for Advanced Design & Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics (CADMIM)

Abstract:  Precision medicine is the paradigm to develop treatments for patients based on molecular targets that are effective in vivo when administered. That is, one must not only be able to identify molecular and cellular targets that are the source of disease but also understand how these targets behave in the body based on physiological principles. Microfluidics bridges the scales of molecular, cellular, tissue, and can even recapitulate organ-level microphysiological functions of the body, essentially enabling microprocessors for a plethora of health indicators. Recent developments in microfluidics have contributed to burgeoning precision medicine fields such as liquid biopsy, immunotherapy, single cell analysis, genotyping and gene sequencing, and microphysiological systems. In this talk I will highlight microfluidics projects in my lab that address the various aspects of precision medicine specifically harvesting immune cells and rare cells from blood and performing single cell analyses and cell engineering on chip. As such, the vision is for microfluidic technologies to close the loop from detection to diagnosis, to therapy.

Bio:  Abraham (Abe) P. Lee is Professor of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at the University of California, Irvine. He is Director of the NSF I/UCRC “Center for Advanced Design & Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics” (CADMIM). Currently Dr. Lee serves as Editor-in-Chief for the Lab on a Chip journal. Prior to UCI, he was at the National Cancer Institute and was a program manager in the Microsystems Technology Office at DARPA (1999-2001), Senior Technology Advisor at National Cancer Institute (NCI) and a group leader with Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL). Over the years, Dr. Lee has pioneered research in applying microfluidics to biomedical applications, and currently focuses on integrated microfluidic systems for precision medicine including liquid biopsy, microphysiological systems, cell engineering, and immunotherapy. His research has contributed to the founding of several start-up companies. He owns 55 issued US patents and is author of over 120 journals articles. Professor Lee was awarded the 2009 Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize and is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).