You will find on this page some examples of current medical challenges we are working on, please do not hesitate to get in touch if you would like to know more. You can also check our list of publications to see previous projects/applications.
Osteoporosis.
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In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Strathclyde, we are exploring new approaches to promote bone generation. Our group most specifically is looking at the response of cells to new treatments by characterising their mechanical profile using our very own real-time deformability cytometer. Deformability cytometry is a technique that allows to push cells in a small channel where they will experience deformation. That deformation is recorded using high-speed cameras allowing to analyse thousands of cells very quickly and map the mechanical phenotype of a sample with single cell precision. Deformability cytometry can be applied to a wide range of samples and we have experience with e.g. stem cells, parasites, hydrogels and others.
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Infectious diseases.
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We are also using deformability cytometry to understand how blood cells change during infection. But our projects on infectious diseases go beyond deformability cytometry; we are exploring ways to enrich pathogens without knowing their identity using biomicking receptors and we are working with colleagues from industry and academia to develop new low-cost sensors that can help detect resistance to antibiotics. Antimicrobial resistance and sepsis are huge medical challenges and we are dedicated to trying to engineer new technologies that can help tackle them. If you want to know more on sepsis, you can also have a look at our engagement work to increase awareness in schools.
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Neglected tropical diseases.
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In collaboration with colleagues at the University of Glasgow, we are using imaging flow cytometry to better understand the morphological changes of a parasite causing Leishmaniasis (a neglected tropical disease) during the cell cycle. Using this technique, we have been able to identify a morphological fingerprint for a specific stage of the cycle we were interested in and we used that fingerprint to develop microfluidic devices to enrich cells with the good profile. The microfluidic devices we develop rely on a precise manipulation of the fluid flow at the micron scale so that cells can be separated purely based on their morphology, without any labels or images. This consequently enables cell separation using low-cost, portable devices that can be deployed outside of our laboratory.
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Endometriosis.
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Endometriosis is notoriously known to be hard to diagnose, with people having to wait typically years before medical confirmation. By working with experts in sensing technologies and endometriosis, we are currently developing new approaches to try to identify very quickly different molecules that are known to be relevant to endometriosis. More specifically, we are using engineering innovations to perform sample preparation in a way that will maximise the chances of detecting endometriosis-related signatures. Similarly to our work on neglected tropical diseases, these innovations rely on low-cost, portable devices to enable, in the future, medical diagnostics at the point-of-need.
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The funders that support(ed) our research.
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