We’re Sadeka Nujhat, Hannah Leese and Sandhya Moise from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. We research ways to detect cancer as early as possible to help save lives.

Hi Reddit, We are Sadeka, Hannah and Sandhya.

Our research is on developing technologies to detect cancer at its early stages. Early detection significantly increases survival rate in cancer patients. For example, for ovarian cancer patients, the 5-year survival rate is below 30% when diagnosed at stage 3 or higher (stages are levels of cancer advancements). If detected early at stage 1, this survival rate increases to >90%. However, early detection of ovarian cancer is challenging due to lack of unique symptoms, especially since we do not yet have a screening device.

Our research vision is to design a screening device for the early detection of ovarian cancer. We are developing microfluidics- based devices for screening. These tiny devices have a little inlet port into which we will be able to load patient blood samples. These samples will travel through the device and if there are any cancer cell secreted molecules or vesicles, these will be detected within the device. When captured, the device gives a signal and the patient will be advised to take more sensitive tests for further investigation.

Please ask us anything about using engineering approaches for detecting cancer.

Proof: Here's my proof!

Comments: 31 • Responses: 5  • Date: 

CommunityPowerful5411 karma

Hi team. Can you tell me a little more about what microfluidics is please?

UniversityofBath14 karma

Sure, thanks your question, microfluidics enables us to do lots of different things with tiny volumes/amounts of fluids which are applied to lots of different fields from bioengineering to catalysis. By having micro-sized channels, we can incorporate them into devices to enable us to work on much smaller scales. This helps us investigate fundamental questions such as how a fluid flows at the microscale (around the thickness of a single human hair) but also enables high-throughput screening and manufacturing through multiplexing (putting lots of devices together) microfluidic devices. Some vaccines are manufactured through high-throughput microfluidics. Microfluidics can give us the ability to have lab-on-chips, where we miniaturise all the components, we can carry out in a lab onto one chip.

CommunityPowerful546 karma

idic devices. Some vaccines are manufactured through high-throughput microfluidics. Microfluidics can give us the ability to have lab-on-chips, where we miniaturise all the components, we can carry out in a lab onto one chip.

Wow! So you wouldn't need a large amount of blood to detect cancer?

UniversityofBath7 karma

Exactly :) we would be able to use smaller amounts

somnamomma7 karma

What stage of research are you in regarding the device for detecting ovarian cancer? What part of your research excites you all the most?

UniversityofBath10 karma

What part of your research excites you all the most?

Thank you for your question. We are currently optimising the design of the microfluidic device to efficiently isolate exosomes from an ovarian cancer cell line. So still at its very early stages. The key challenge is to capture cancer cell-derived exosomes (the biomarkers we are interested in) from the total population of exosomes (healthy cell-derived + cancer cell-derived). This is because the latter are a very small fraction of the total population and also because of their size (a few nanometres) it is harder to capture and detect them with existing technology. Overall, this is a really exciting project, and when realised, would pave way for a national level screening programme for early detection of ovarian cancer. The parts that we are most excited about are(i) identifying reliable biomarkers for early stages of ovarian cancer and (ii) being able to effectively capture and detect them within our device.

UniversityofBath5 karma

Hi everyone. Sorry we're late, we were having some technical difficulties.

daekle1 karma

Hi guys, Do you have a tabletop vortex mixer, and if so how often do you stick your finger into it? (in my opinion its the best part of being in science)

less importantly, are your microfluidic devices silicon based (using the same processing as silicon fabrication, such as photolithography), or can you make MF devices with plastics? as I assume the latter would be cheaper.

UniversityofBath5 karma

Thanks for the question 😊 the vortex mixers do have multiple uses. We are using a few approaches to develop the devices; photolithography is one of them as you say, but we are also using higher resolution 3D printers to produce cheaper at scale microfluidic devices.