Early Cancer Detection using the power of sound and liquids
In my research, I am using acoustic forces to capture tiny particles. The particles I am interested in are called Exosomes and are 1000x smaller than the diameter of your hair! They come from the inside of any cell in your body and therefore contain important information about the cell. We can possibly use the content of these Exosomes to detect if they originate from a cancer cell and thus detect cancer before it could be detected with any other current method.
The major challenge is to capture and wash these Exosomes from a blood sample. In a first step, we use acoustic forces to separate red and white blood cells from blood plasma.
Afterwards, we use a second device also based on acoustic forces to capture the Exosomes out of the blood plasma. The whole procedure can be performed within minutes and does only need as little as one drop of blood.
Contact
Michael Gerlt
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lunds University
E-mail: [email protected]
