Microengineered Biomaterials and Biosystems for Systems Immunology, Cancer Biology, and Stem Cell-based Regenerative Medicine.

摘要

Many exciting topics exist at the interface between biology and micro/nanotechnology. This dissertation will discuss interdisciplinary researches that leveraging the engineering advances in biomaterials, microfluidics and advanced manufacturing for new and better solutions for emerging problems in cancer biology, systems immunology, and stem cell-based regenerative medicine. First, this dissertation will discuss the potential of integrated microfluidic immunophenotyping assay device to perform rapid, accurate, and sensitive functional cellular immunophenotyping assays for target subpopulations of immune cells isolated directly from patient blood. This dissertation will also explore the possible technique using nanotopographic substrates for efficient capture of circulating tumor cells regardless of surface protein expression and cancer type, critical for early cancer diagnosis and for fundamental understanding of cancer metastasis. This dissertation will also provide a comprehensively profiling of the biophysical characteristics of inflammatory breast cancer stem cells at the single-cell level using multiple microengineered tools to delineate the live cell phenotypic characteristics of the model of the most metastatic breast cancer subtype. Last, this dissertation will further explore synthetic micro/nanoscale ex vivo cellular microenvironment for study and regulating human embryonic stem cell behaviors that are desirable for functional tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. These novel micro/nanoengineered functional biomaterials and biosystems will not only permit advances in engineering but also greatly contribute to improving human health.