A major focus of my lab is
understanding the mechanical properties of biological materials.
And that ranges from animal cells to plant cells
and we're particularly interested in understanding the cell nucleus
which is where most of the genomic material, most of the DNA of the cells is contained
So there are many cells that appear in this
way such as cells in our blood, white blood cells.
In some cases, however, the nucleus has a different shape.
So this is characteristic of some types of cancer cells
where this increased volume it occupies inside of the cell
is actually used as a marker for diagnosing and even prognosing cancer --
some types of breast cancer, for example, the more severe the shape irregularity, the
worse the prognosis for breast cancer.
This matters for disease -- so cancer cells, for example, are softer,
more flexible than benign cells. And in fact, when treated with different drugs,
they become stiffer. So why is that? This is a good question, something
that we're trying to better understand. In order to do this, we're building a lot
of new technologies to be able to probe the texture or squishiness of individual cells
and nuclei.
How do we probe the mechanical proprieties of cells?
These are very small objects: typically 10 microns or 20 microns, maybe more, in diameter.
This requires using very small pieces of equipment. One of the ways we do that is we build a tortuous
path, fabricated into some silicon polymer,
commonly known as a microfluidic device. And then we force the cells to squeeze through
these narrow constrictions, which gives us some
indication of the deformability of the whole cell.
We image the cells and the deformations of them
using microscopes and high speed cameras.
So some of these technologies that we're developing could have
eventually, a clinical impact. They could be used by doctors to be able to
diagnose or determine which drug treatments might be most effective for
particular patients. These are of course much longer term potential
applications, but it's something that, another dimension
of our work that we're excited about.