Nanotechnology produces cheaper and portable measuring instruments

Researching, creating and applying nanoparticles go hand in hand in bionanotechnology. However, it is high time for a periodic table of nanoparticles. “Scientists working in bionanotechnology find themselves in the same position as the alchemists of the early Renaissance,” says Professor Aldrik Velders in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Bionanotechnology at Wageningen University on 17 September.

Let's start by correcting one misunderstanding: nanoparticles are not extremely small. In fact, they vary in size - from a couple of atoms to millions of atoms or thousands of molecules - and make up an intermediate form between loose molecules and relatively large grains. Proteins are also a type of nanoparticle. “In light of this, chemists see nanoparticles as actually being quite large,” explains Professor Velders in his inaugural speech entitled 'Much ado about nano'. “Nanoparticles form a whole new world, complete with its own peculiarities. With this in mind, it is important that all nanoparticles which form spontaneously or are formed by human intervention are properly catalogued. This is why we are working on technology which will allow us to catalogue them effectively, adopting an optical approach via absorption and fluorescence and using magnetic resonance spectroscopy such as the technology used in MRI scans. We also do not have a periodic table of nanoparticles like the one we have for all chemical elements. We currently only know a few classes of particles, and we have very few predictive values. We also have very little understanding of how nanoparticles behave in biological systems - this despite the fact that the basis of life is found within the interaction of molecules and that nanoparticles could hold a range of useful applications.”

Creating nanoparticles

 

Aside from carrying out pure research, Velders is also active in creating therapeutic and diagnostic nanoparticles. “We can create nanoparticles which change colour when they are in the vicinity of other molecules. We are currently working on this project together with Leiden University Medical Center. Amongst other things, we aim to create applications for robot-assisted surgery. It is also possible to make hard and soft nanoparticles, as well as to insert extra molecules into the soft nanoparticles. We are currently researching how we can insert metal complexes into a large nanoparticle, or a 'micelle’, which can then be implemented as a sort of Trojan horse. This technique can be used in the first instance for diagnostic purposes; later, it could be used to administer medication into a cell. To give you an idea of the scale of this: if an atom were a large as a football, the micelle would be as large as the Main Auditorium of the university, and the cell would be a city as large as Wageningen. Alongside this, we are studying the coming together and break up of nanoparticles under the influence of biomarkers in blood samples and other areas. Changes in light absorption or fluorescence indicate that somebody has a certain disease.”

A lab on a chip

 

Velders is also involved in researching how nanotechnology can be applied. This mostly involves the development of diagnostic sensors, as he explains. “By developing miniature instruments, we can produce cheaper and portable devices that can be used everywhere. We can create a lab on a chip. This is useful for analyses of ditchwater on the campus, for instance, or for monitoring malaria infections in the field in Sub-Saharan Africa.” A significant development in this respect is that Velders and his group are now able to create microchannels in small blocks that are made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a type of rubber. They use the same plastic as Lego bricks to do this. By creating a flow of substances - in some cases cooled, heated, and/or illuminated - through the small channels, you can trigger reactions in the PDMS blocks or carry out measurements without the need for large and expensive apparatus.

NMR antennae

 

“We are also in the process of developing very small NMR antennae. Using NMR, we can observe energy in the form of radio frequencies. These are specific to an element or atom, so this can also tell us how atoms will look later in the same molecule or nanoparticle. Every element has its own specific frequency. Our nanospools can listen to all frequencies simultaneously instead of just one, which is usually the case. Our nanospools are also a lot cheaper. A normal spool can easily cost ten thousand euros, whereas our most recently development antennae cost less than one euro.”

Finally, Velders will soon become involved with the catching and removing of antibiotic-resistant bacteria from the waste water of hospitals in order to prevent these bacteria from spreading. “We are developing technology that will allow us to attach these cells to nanoplates. We can convert expensive hospital technology to purify waste water; so from nanotechnology used in refined medicines to nanotechnology used in mud.”

Wageningen University

Nanotechnology World Association

Using golden DNA strands to close electric circuits in biosensors

The researchers hope to create diagnostic test which can detect very small amounts of specific DNA

molecules. Photograph: Ken Welch

By letting DNA strands grow together with gold, scientists at Uppsala Berzelii Centre for Neurodiagnostics and Science for Life Laboratory have developed a brand new concept for super sensitive diagnostics of different diseases. The study will be published in the upcoming issue of ACS Nano.

In the new study, the researchers have developed a new method for detecting DNA with an extremely strong signal. The method relies on growth of a DNA strand over a narrow gap between two electrodes in an electric circuit. The strand will only grow if a certain DNA molecule has bound to the surface of one electrode, which makes it possible to build diagnostic tests for detection of that specific DNA molecule.

“We believe that the incredibly strong signal registered when we succeed in growing a golden strand between the electrodes will be possible to turn into a diagnostic test with extreme sensitivity and specificity. Such tests are needed for many diseases where the DNA molecules you are looking for are present only in very small numbers”, says Professor Mats Nilsson, Science for Life Laboratory, who has led the study.

DNA itself does not conduct electricity, but by adding nano particles of gold along the DNA strand, which is then thickened using a gold salt solution, thin gold threads are created within a few minutes which conduct electricity very effectively. When such a strand is created the resistance of the circuit decreases by a factor of a billion.

Camilla Russell, PhD student at Uppsala Berzelii Centre for Neurodiagnostics at Uppsala University and the researcher who has carried out the work, sees great potential in the ‘golden strand’ method: “It should be possible to build very simple test kits using this method, and one test kit can contain many separate sensors to trace a large number of different DNA molecules”, she says.

Fredrik Nikolajeff, Director of Uppsala Berzelii Centre, sees a continued development of the project: “This is a long-term project for developing new sensitive analysis methods which can be used for early diagnostics, for following how diseases develop and to speed up drug development.

We want to continue supporting Camilla’s exciting results through a commercialisation process where we will cooperate with Uppsala University’s business collaboration unit UU Innovation”, he says.

Source: http://www.berzelii.uu.se/uploads/PDF/News/GoldenDNAstrands_in_biosensors_UU_140128.pdf

Cancer lab on a chip

"Liquid biopsy” could one day inform decisions about the right therapy at the right time

The ability to detect circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as they travel through the blood can play an important role in early diagnosis, characterization of cancer subtypes, treatment monitoring and metastasis. By measuring a patient’s CTC levels over time, clinicians can quickly determine if a particular cancer treatment is working.

CTCs can also be tested to identify genetic mutations associated with a tumor. Many newer cancer medications are designed to target specific genetic mutations, so they work best for limited types and stages of cancer. CTCs can provide a quick method to help physicians choose the most appropriate targeted therapy for a particular patient.

The potential benefits of CTCs abound. But with only one CTC for every one billion blood cells, finding any CTCs at all presents a significant challenge. 

This part of the microfluidic CTC-iChip system sorts cells within
a sample by size. Source: Murat Karabacak, Harvard Medical School.

Slalom Success: Single File Arrangement Eases CTC Sorting

With NIBIB funding, Mehmet Toner, Ph.D., and his research team at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center have been working to create a monitoring device centered on CTCs. 

The researchers’ previously developed devices could reliably sort CTCs from the other types of cells in whole blood—namely, red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. But the CTCs could not be easily retrieved for further testing. 

Seeking to improve their design, the researchers’ newest iteration of their “cancer lab on a chip,” the CTC-iChip, integrates several principles of magnetism and microfluidics to provide high-speed, automated sorting of the rare cells and can be applied to almost any type of cancer. 

After collecting a blood sample, the researchers mixed the sample with tiny, magnetic beads coated with specific antibodies. In some cases, the researchers used antibodies that seek out and attach to CTCs, and in other cases they used antibodies that bind to white blood cells. This magnetic labeling would come into play later in the microfluidic sorting process.

In the first stage of the device, the whole blood (with magnetized cells) is sorted through an array of microposts that separates the various cells by size. Red blood cells, platelets, and other smaller particles are directed out of the device, while larger cells—including CTCs—flow into the next stage of the device.

A series of S-shaped curves aligns the remaining cells into a single file, a process known as inertial focusing. The cells then pass through a slight magnetic field, quickly and easily separating magnetically labeled cells from unlabeled cells. 

While seemingly simple in concept, the inertial focusing mechanism is a significant advance in CTC isolation technology. Magnetic separation had been studied as a way to sort cells, but previous methods required relatively large magnetic beads or a large number of beads to be attached to cells. This often limited the yield or purity of the collected CTC sample. In Toner’s CTC-iChip, because the cells pass through the field one at a time, only a few small beads per cell are needed.

The microfluidic CTC-iChip system first sorts the various cells in a blood sample by size, allowing only CTCs and white blood cells to enter the inertial focusing chamber, which lines up those cells into a single file. A magnetic field then deflects cells previously labeled with tiny magnetic beads, isolating CTCs for further study. Source: Murat Karabacak, Harvard Medical School. Adapted from Science Translational Medicine, April 2013. 

Toner and colleagues tested their device using positive and negative depletion methods. 

Positive depletion identifies CTCs using antibodies that latch onto the protein EpCAM, commonly found on the surface of CTCs. Current commercially available CTC-sorting devices are based on positive depletion, and the CTC-iChip also successfully isolated magnetically labeled CTCs with this method. However, not all tumor cells produce EpCAM, and some studies suggest those that do may produce less EpCAM both in their earliest stages of growth and in later stages as they begin to metastasize; thus, the clinical usefulness of the positive depletion method is limited. 

Negative depletion, in contrast, sorts out CTCs by eliminating all other “known” cells first. By magnetically labeling white blood cells rather than CTCs, the researchers were able to isolate a vast array of unlabeled tumor cells using CTC-iChip. Negative depletion allows for the detection of CTCs without having to know what type of tumor they came from beforehand and regardless of whether they produce EpCAM. Thus, negative depletion methods may be able to identify a greater variety of tumors across a broader range of development than positive depletion.

CTC Screening May Help Personalize Cancer Treatment 

Developed by NIBIB grantee Mehmet Toner, Ph.D., and colleagues, the CTC-iChip system shown here was able to isolate circulating tumor cells from blood samples quickly and efficiently. Studying a patient's CTCs may someday help monitor disease progress or inform treatment decisions. Source: Murat Karabacak, Harvard Medical School.

As described in the researchers’ April 2013 article published in Science Translational Medicine,  the CTC-iChip was able to sort CTCs from whole blood:

• quicker than previously developed microfluidic devices, allowing larger blood samples to be processed in a short amount of time
• more efficiently than other magnet-based sorting systems, reducing the amount of materials required and increasing the sensitivity of the device
• more effectively in samples with few EpCAM-producing CTCs compared to other sorting methods
• more effectively in samples known to not express EpCAM, such as triple negative breast cancer and melanoma.

By collecting CTCs in a way that allows them to be studied further, the CTC-iChip could also help clinicians identify important genetic differences between individual CTCs that may inform which targeted therapy is indicated. 

“You’re doing a liquid biopsy, in a sense. You find these cells in the blood and then look at their genomic makeup and decide what medication [the patient] should be put on,” said Toner.  

Because of intra-tumor heterogeneity, a biopsy needle may miss its mark. Compared to blood draws, tissue biopsies are also relatively invasive and complex, so they may not be done very often. Less frequent monitoring may miss important stages in disease progression. 

While not yet available clinically nor a complete substitute for current cancer care, technology like the CTC-iChip could someday make monitoring and treating the disease more personalized.  According to Toner, “It will enable, in the long run, [a physician] to treat the right patient with the right drug at the right dose at the right time.” 

Source: http://www.nibib.nih.gov/news-events/newsroom/tiny-technology-enables-improved-detection-circulating-tumor-cells

Self-steering particles go with the flow

An asymmetrical particle flows along the center of a microfluidic
channel.
VIDEO SCREENSHOT

Asymmetrical particles could make lab-on-a-chip diagnostic devices more efficient and portable.

MIT chemical engineers have designed tiny particles that can “steer” themselves along preprogrammed trajectories and align themselves to flow through the center of a microchannel, making it possible to control the particles’ flow through microfluidic devices without applying any external forces.

Such particles could make it more feasible to design lab-on-a-chip devices, which hold potential as portable diagnostic devices for cancer and other diseases. These devices consist of microfluidic channels engraved on tiny chips, but current versions usually require a great deal of extra instrumentation attached to the chip, limiting their portability. 

Much of that extra instrumentation is needed to keep the particles flowing single file through the center of the channel, where they can be analyzed. This can be done by applying a magnetic or electric field, or by flowing two streams of liquid along the outer edges of the channel, forcing the particles to stay in the center.

The new MIT approach, described in Nature Communications, requires no external forces and takes advantage of hydrodynamic principles that can be exploited simply by altering the shapes of the particles.

Lead authors of the paper are Burak Eral, an MIT postdoc, and William Uspal, who recently received a PhD in physics from MIT. Patrick Doyle, the Singapore Research Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, is the senior author of the paper. 

Exploiting asymmetry 

The work builds on previous research showing that when a particle is confined in a narrow channel, it has strong hydrodynamic interactions with both the confining walls and any neighboring particles. These interactions, which originate from how particles perturb the surrounding fluid, are powerful enough that they can be used to control the particles’ trajectory as they flow through the channel.

The MIT researchers realized that they could manipulate these interactions by altering the particles’ symmetry. Each of their particles is shaped like a dumbbell, but with a different-size disc at each end. 

When these asymmetrical particles flow through a narrow channel, the larger disc encounters more resistance, or drag, forcing the particle to rotate until the larger disc is lagging behind. The asymmetrical particles stay in this slanted orientation as they flow.

Because of this slanted orientation, the particles not only move forward, in the direction of the flow, they also drift toward one side of the channel. As a particle approaches the wall, the perturbation it creates in the fluid is reflected back by the wall, just as waves in a pool reflect from its wall. This reflection forces the particle to flip its orientation and move toward the center of the channel.

Slightly asymmetrical particles will overshoot the center and move toward the other wall, then come back toward the center again until they gradually achieve a straight path. Very asymmetrical particles will approach the center without crossing it, but very slowly. But with just the right amount of asymmetry, a particle will move directly to the centerline in the shortest possible time. 

“Now that we understand how the asymmetry plays a role, we can tune it to what we want. If you want to focus particles in a given position, you can achieve that by a fundamental understanding of these hydrodynamic interactions,” Eral says.

“The paper convincingly shown that shape matters, and swarms can be redirected provided that shapes are well designed,” says Patrick Tabeling, a professor at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris, who was not part of the research team. “The new and quite sophisticated mechanism … may open new routes for manipulating particles and cells in an elegant manner.”

Diagnosis by particles

In 2006, Doyle’s lab developed a way to create huge batches of identical particles made of hydrogel, a spongy polymer. To create these particles, each thinner than a human hair, the researchers shine ultraviolet light through a mask onto a stream of flowing building blocks, or oligomers. Wherever the light strikes, solid polymeric particles are formed in the shape of the mask, in a process called photopolymerization. 

During this process, the researchers can also load a fluorescent probe such as an antibody at one end of the dumbbell. The other end is stamped with a barcode — a pattern of dots that reveals the particle’s target molecule. 

This type of particle can be useful for diagnosing cancer and other diseases, following customization to detect proteins or DNA sequences in blood samples that can be signs of disease. Using a cytometer, scientists can read the fluorescent signal as the particles flow by in single file.

“Self-steering particles could lead to simplified flow scanners for point-of-care devices, and also provide a new toolkit from which one can develop other novel bioassays,” Doyle says.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Novartis, and the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies through the U.S. Army Research Office.

Source: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/self-steering-particles-go-with-the-flow-1108.html

Diagnostic Devices the Size of a Credit Card Are Now a Possibility

A microfluidic bioreactors consists of two chambers separated by
a nanoporous silicon membrane. It allows for flow-based assays
using minimal amounts of reagent. The ultra-thin silicon membrane
provides an excellent mimic of biological barrier properties.
NOTE: This image combines two exposures in order to capture the
brighter and darker parts of the scene, which exceed the dynamic
range of the camera sensor. The resulting composite is truer to what the
eye actually sees.

The ability to shrink laboratory-scale processes to automated chip-sized systems would revolutionize biotechnology and medicine. 

For example, inexpensive and highly portable devices that process blood samples to detect biological agents such as anthrax are needed by the U.S. military and for homeland security efforts. One of the challenges of "lab-on-a-chip" technology is the need for miniaturized pumps to move solutions through micro-channels. Electroosmotic pumps (EOPs), devices in which fluids appear to magically move through porous media in the presence of an electric field, are ideal because they can be readily miniaturized. EOPs however, require bulky, external power sources, which defeats the concept of portability. But a super-thin silicon membrane developed at the University of Rochester could now make it possible to drastically shrink the power source, paving the way for diagnostic devices the size of a credit card.

"Up until now, electroosmotic pumps have had to operate at a very high voltage—about 10 kilovolts," said James McGrath, associate professor of biomedical engineering. "Our device works in the range of one-quarter of a volt, which means it can be integrated into devices and powered with small batteries."

McGrath's research paper is being published this week by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

McGrath and his team use porous nanocrystalline silicon (pnc-Si) membranes that are microscopically thin—it takes more than one thousand stacked on top of each other to equal the width of a human hair. And that's what allows for a low-voltage system.

A porous membrane needs to be placed between two electrodes in order to create what's known as electroosmotic flow, which occurs when an electric field interacts with ions on a charged surface, causing fluids to move through channels. The membranes previously used in EOPs have resulted in a significant voltage drop between the electrodes, forcing engineers to begin with bulky, high-voltage power sources. The thin pnc Si membranes allow the electrodes to be placed much closer to each other, creating a much stronger electric field with a much smaller drop in voltage. As a result, a smaller power source is needed.

"Up until now, not everything associated with miniature pumps was miniaturized," said McGrath. "Our device opens the door for a tremendous number of applications."

Along with medical applications, it's been suggested that EOPs could be used to cool electronic devices. As electronic devices get smaller, components are packed more tightly, making it easier for the devices to overheat. With miniature power supplies, it may be possible to use EOPs to help cool laptops and other portable electronic devices.

McGrath said there's one other benefit to the silicon membranes. "Due to scalable fabrication methods, the nanocrystalline silicon membranes are inexpensive to make and can be easily integrated on silicon or silica-based microfluid chips."

Source: http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=7592

Quickly detect rare types of cancer cells circulating in a patient's blood

Researchers are developing a system that uses tiny magnetic beads to quickly detect rare types of cancer cells circulating in a patient's blood, an advance that could help medical doctors diagnose cancer earlier than now possible and monitor how well a patient is responding to therapy.

While other researchers have used magnetic beads for similar applications, the new “high-throughput" system has the ability to quickly process and analyze large volumes of blood or other fluids, said Cagri Savran(pronounced Chary Savran), an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University.

He is working with oncologists at the Indiana University School of Medicine to further develop the technology, which recently was highlighted in the journal Lab on a Chip.

The approach combines two techniques: immunomagnetic separation and microfluidics. In immunomagnetic separation, magnetic beads about a micron in diameter are "functionalized," or coated with antibodies that recognize and attach to antigens on the surface of target cells.

The researchers functionalized the beads to recognize breast cancer and lung cancer cells in laboratory cultures. 

"We were able to detect cancer cells with up to a 90 percent yield," said Savran, working with Purdue postdoctoral fellow Chun-Li Chang and medical researchers Shadia Jalal and Daniela E. Matei from the IU School of Medicine's Department of Medicine. "We expect this system to be useful in a wide variety of settings, including detection of rare cells for clinical applications."

Previous systems using immunomagnetic separation to isolate cells required that the cells then be transferred to another system to be identified, counted and studied.

"What's new here is that we've built a system that can perform all of these steps on one chip," said Savran, also an associate professor of biomedical engineering. "It both separates cells and also places them on a chip surface so you can count them and study them with a microscope."

Another innovation is the fast processing, he said. Other "microfluidic" chips are unable to quickly process large volumes of fluid because they rely on extremely narrow channels, which restrict fluid flow.

"The circulating cancer cells are difficult to detect because very few of them are contained in blood," Savran said. "That means you have to use as many magnetic beads as practically possible to quickly screen and process a relatively large sample, or you won't find these cells."

The new design passes the fluid through a chamber that allows for faster flow; a standard 7.5-milliliter fluid sample can run through the system in a matter of minutes.

The Purdue portion of the research is based at the Birck Nanotechnology Center in Purdue's Discovery Park.

The beads are directed by a magnetic field to a silicon mesh containing holes 8 microns in diameter. Because the target cells are so sparse, many of the beads fail to attract any and pass through the silicon mesh. The beads that have attached to cells are too large to pass through the holes in the mesh.

If needed, the cells can quickly be flushed from the system for further analysis simply by turning off the magnetic field.

"Not only can the cells be readily retrieved for further usage, the chip can be re-used for subsequent experiments," Savran said.

The technology also could be used to cull other types of cells.

"This is not only for cancer applications," he said.

The work has been supported by the Purdue Center for Cancer Research and the Purdue Oncological Sciences Center, the National Science Foundation and the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center.

Findings were detailed in a research paper published last year in Proceedings of IEEE Sensors. The work also was highlighted on Sept. 18 in Lab on a Chip.  

Source: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2013/Q4/cell-detection-system-promising-for-medical-research,-diagnostics.html  

UCLA researchers' smartphone 'microscope' can detect a single virus, nanoparticles

Your smartphone now can see what the naked eye cannot: A single virus and bits of material less than one-thousandth of the width of a human hair.

 

Aydogan Ozcan, a professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and his team have created a portable smartphone attachment that can be used to perform sophisticated field testing to detect viruses and bacteria without the need for bulky and expensive microscopes and lab equipment. The device weighs less than half a pound.

 

"This cellphone-based imaging platform could be used for specific and sensitive detection of sub-wavelength objects, including bacteria and viruses and therefore could enable the practice of nanotechnology and biomedical testing in field settings and even in remote and resource-limited environments," Ozcan said. "These results also constitute the first time that single nanoparticles and viruses have been detected using a cellphone-based, field-portable imaging system."

 

The new research, published on Sept. 9 in the American Chemical Society's journal ACS Nano, comes on the heels of Ozcan's other recent inventions, including a cellphone camera–enabled sensor for allergens in food products and a smart phone attachment that can conduct common kidney tests.

 

Capturing clear images of objects as tiny as a single virus or a nanoparticle is difficult because the optical signal strength and contrast are very low for objects that are smaller than the wavelength of light.

 

In the ACS Nano paper, Ozcan details a fluorescent microscope device fabricated by a 3-D printer that contains a color filter, an external lens and a laser diode. The diode illuminates fluid or solid samples at a steep angle of roughly 75 degrees. This oblique illumination avoids detection of scattered light that would otherwise interfere with the intended fluorescent image.

 

Using this device, which attaches directly to the camera module on a smartphone, Ozcan's team was able to detect single human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) particles. HCMV is a common virus that can cause birth defects such as deafness and brain damage and can hasten the death of adults who have received organ implants, who are infected with the HIV virus or whose immune systems otherwise have been weakened. A single HCMV particle measures about 150–300 nanometers; a human hair is roughly 100,000 nanometers thick.

 

In a separate experiment, Ozcan's team also detected nanoparticles — specially marked fluorescent beads made of polystyrene — as small as 90–100 nanometers.

 

To verify these results, researchers in Ozcan's lab used other imaging devices, including a scanning electron microscope and a photon-counting confocal microscope. These experiments confirmed the findings made using the new cellphone-based imaging device.

 

Ozcan is the principal investigator on the research. The first author of ACS Nano the paper is Qingshan Wei, a postdoctoral researcher in Ozcan's lab and at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), where Ozcan is associate director. Other co-authors include Hangfei Qi and Ting-Ting Wu of the UCLA Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology; Wei Luo, Derek Tseng, Zhe Wan and Zoltan Gorocs of the UCLA Electrical Engineering Department; So Jung Ki of the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Laurent Bentolila of CNSI and the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; and Ren Sun of the UCLA Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology and CNSI.

 

For more information on the Ozcan Research Group, visit http://org.ee.ucla.edu/ Ozcan is a founder of the mobile microanalysis startup company Holomic LLC, which seeks to commercialize imaging and sensing technologies licensed from the UCLA Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research

.

Funding support for the Ozcan Research Group comes from Nokia University Research Funding, the Army Research Office, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Naval Research and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

 

The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, established in 1945, offers 28 academic and professional degree programs and has an enrollment of more than 5,000 students. The school's distinguished faculty are leading research to address many of the critical challenges of the 21st century, including renewable energy, clean water, health care, wireless sensing and networking, and cyber-security. Ranked among the top 10 engineering schools at public universities nationwide, the school is home to eight multimillion-dollar interdisciplinary research centers in wireless sensor systems, wireless health, nanoelectronics, nanomedicine, renewable energy, customized computing, the smart grid, and the Internet, all funded by federal and private agencies and individual donors.

Source: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-researchers-smartphone-microscope-248254.aspx?link_page_rss=248254