CBE - Microfluidic Mechanosensors for Single Cell Health Monitoring

Biomechanics at the cellular level have been investigated as biomarkers for disease, through which it has been shown that cell stiffness of metastatic cancer cells can be more than 70% softer than the benign cells in patients with suspected lung, breast, and pancreatic cancer. An opportunity exists to advance our understanding of the mechanical cues of pathological cellular cultures by integrating dynamic microfluidic particle trapping with high resolution image analysis and machine learning. In this project, workflows will be defined, developed, and optimized for observation and quantification of fluid induced mechanical stresses on hydrodynamically trapped soft materials. In this summer project, our objective is to correlate mechanical deformation of a trapped soft material to the applied fluid stress in a hydrodynamic microfluidic trapping device.