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Towards a microfluidic disease detection deviced based on cellular adhesion differences

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Biological Engineering Division, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 44-45). / There is a great need in the fields of biology, medicine, and pharmaceuticals to create high-throughput devices for the detection of specific cell states in a heterogeneous mixture of cells. The desire is to differentiate among diseased and healthy cells, cell age, and cell type with the minimum amount of sample pretreatment. This project addresses this need by developing microfluidic devices that exploit the adhesion differences between cell states and cell types to rapidly count cells of different types without the need for labels. There are two avenues in which to explore cell adhesion differences with these devices, the first is a net electrostatic change at the surface of the cell wall and the second is the presence of specific cell-membrane adhesion proteins. It is hypothesized that the forced interaction of the cell wall with the microfabricated microcapillary walls would result in a differential velocity based on cell type that could be detected simply using a microscope and video camera or an interferometer. The eventual integration of cell velocity detection would result in a portable all-inclusive lab-on-a-chip system that could be used in the field for detecting the presence of diseases, such as malaria and cancer as well as in a lab setting for drug discovery. / by Kristen M. Naegle. / S.M.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37962
Date January 2006
CreatorsNaegle, Kristen M
ContributorsMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Biological Engineering Division., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Biological Engineering Division.
PublisherMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Source SetsM.I.T. Theses and Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Format50 leaves, application/pdf
RightsMIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

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