CHE 598 Seminar: Isolation of exosomes and other nanocarriers in blood and profiling of their molecular cargo

About the event

Presenter: Dr. Hsueh-Chia Chang, Bayer Professor of Engineering, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Notre Dame

Nanocarriers like exosomes, lipoproteins and ribonulear proteins transport molecules from cells to cells and from organs to organs via our microcirculation system.  As such, they are known to play important roles in cancer metastasis and immune-response to cancer growth.  The proteins and RNAs they carry are hence excellent biomarkers for cancer screening and immuno-therapy management.  However, there are over 1018 nanocarriers in 1 ml of blood and only a small fraction of them come from diseased cells.  The challenge is to isolate only those from cancer cells and to identify and quantify the molecular cargo within them, such that the location, stage and heterogeneity of the cancer can be determined.  To develop this liquid biopsy technology, we have developed an array of nanofractionation technologies that can separate the nanocarriers by charge, size and surface proteins.  We are integrating these different modules into a multi-stage system, complete with recycles and feedback control. We report our progress thus far and benchmark our quantification of exosome microRNAs against current tissue biopsy, rtPCR, rapid sequencing and other techniques with clinical and spiked blood samples.