Close Menu
  • News
  • Medical
  • Technology
  • Nanomaterials
  • Research
  • Blog
    • Nasiol.com
  • Contact
    • Tech7685@gmail.com
What's Hot

A leap toward clean energy storage

May 25, 2025

Biosensor uses pH-responsive DNA nanoswitches for highly sensitive bladder cancer detection in urine

May 24, 2025

Photoresponsive cages show promise for tunable supramolecular electronics

May 24, 2025
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Nanotech – Nanomaterials | Medical | Research | News Stories Updated Daily Nanotech – Nanomaterials | Medical | Research | News Stories Updated Daily
  • News
  • Medical
  • Technology
  • Nanomaterials
  • Research
  • Blog
    • Nasiol.com
  • Contact
    • Tech7685@gmail.com
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Nanotech – Nanomaterials | Medical | Research | News Stories Updated Daily Nanotech – Nanomaterials | Medical | Research | News Stories Updated Daily
Home»News»Droplet microfluidics advance may hold key to next-generation cancer drugs
News

Droplet microfluidics advance may hold key to next-generation cancer drugs

February 7, 2025No Comments6 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Telegram LinkedIn Tumblr WhatsApp Email
Droplet microfluidics advance may hold key to next-generation cancer drugs
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Telegram Email
Credit: Danielle Benavides/Texas A&M Engineering

At Texas A&M University, one research lab is changing the game of droplet microfluidics, a technique that involves conducting experiments in nanoscale droplets of liquid in a controlled environment. The team has developed a system that makes droplet microfluidics faster, lower cost, and more accurate.

Dr. Arum Han, the Texas Instruments Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his lab associates created a technology named NOVAsort (Next-generation Opto-Volume-based Accurate droplet sorter), a system that allows high throughput screening of molecules and cells at significantly reduced error rates.

Whereas previous research has focused on increasing the speed of assays (a type of laboratory test), the team’s findings, which are published in Nature Communications, are among the first to significantly improve accuracy without compromising the speed of assays.

In the fields of biotechnology, health care and chemistry, there is a need to do a large number (millions and billions) of screening or testing of cells and molecules. However, one of droplet microfluidics’ biggest limitations, despite its major advantages in rapid testing, is a high degree of error in multi-step droplet operations, which is why this powerful technology has not been widely adopted and commercialized beyond a few very simple assays.

“Let’s say you’re a drug developer in the pharmaceutical industry or developing new high-value molecules in the biotechnology industry,” Han said.

“You have to test millions of different drug compounds to see whether they are effective against a particular cancer cell, or test millions of different cells one cell at a time to find the most productive cells to develop a good cell strain. In another example, there are countless microorganisms out in the environment, and to find out which one might be most useful, or which one is doing what functions, you have to test millions and millions of individual cells one at a time.”

See also  Nanoparticle technology demonstrates selective destruction of leukemia cancer cells

Conventionally, these experiments must be repeated via a time-consuming and costly process. With Han’s error-free NOVAsort technology, droplet microfluidics is poised to become a far more valuable technique in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, in agricultural companies and in scientific research where conducting millions of experiments is crucial and often done manually.

“If you test ten thousand or a million assays, then a 5% error is a very large number. Our invention significantly reduces the error in this single cell or single molecule level screening in droplet microfluidics, so that—for example—from an error of 5%, now you have an error of 0.01%,” Han said.

“Using this method, you can run millions of assays, and still the false positive or false negative is very small. With this new technology, droplet microfluidics becomes an extremely powerful tool.”

NOVAsort stems from a project Han began in 2019. The goal was to go out into the field and isolate and retrieve soil and water samples to quickly identify potentially harmful microorganisms in those samples. To achieve this, Han and his team developed a technology to test millions of individual bacteria samples.

“For that project, being fast and highly accurate was crucial because if you have a lot of error-prone results, you can incorrectly classify whether something is harmful or not,” Han said. “That was really driving our motivation to develop this technology: to reduce error so that when you go out and test millions and billions of microbes, the error rate is very, very low.”

Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights.
Sign up for our free newsletter and get updates on breakthroughs,
innovations, and research that matter—daily or weekly.

See also  Lab-spun sponges form perfect scaffolds for growing skin cells to heal wounds

Han’s multi-year project resulted in NOVAsort, which can now be utilized broadly for civilian use. For example, this technology can be developed to help doctors make the best and most timely intervention strategy against diseases.

“Let’s say someone is infected by a pathogenic microorganism,” Han said. “Doctors try an antibiotic treatment, but the frontline of antibiotics don’t work. They have to quickly find which drug might be the best antibiotic at what dose to use against difficult-to-treat infectious diseases.”

Since Han’s new technology allows high throughput screening—testing millions of samples in a short time—this also means it can improve the speed and accuracy in the discovery of potential drug candidates with more precise results, including the next generation of cancer, anti-microbial and anti-fungal drugs.

In addition, this technology can find applications in biomanufacturing, which involves using biological systems to produce valuable products, chemicals and molecules. NOVAsort could accelerate the process of harnessing biological organisms that can produce highly useful molecules.

“We may be able to develop better drugs, better materials and better chemicals, potentially at a lower cost and that are more environmentally friendly and sustainable,” Han said.

With growing interest in computer-aided work such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, NOVAsort could also be used to generate a large amount of high-quality, near-zero error data for researchers.

NOVAsort is a collaboration between Han’s NanoBio Systems Lab and medical science expert Dr. Paul de Figueiredo, formerly of the Texas A&M Health Science Center and currently the NextGen Precision Health Endowed Professor at the University of Missouri. They have spent years working together on developing microfluidic technology and applying it to medical and biotechnology research, with further advancements to come.

See also  Expanding Access to Automated Nanoscale Imaging

All of these microfluidic chips are being fabricated at the AggieFab Nanofabrication Facility, the state-of-the-art cleanroom facility of Texas A&M University.

“My lab has been working on technological innovation, and the application of this technology is where we collaborate broadly with medical school and biotechnology professionals,” Han said. “As for the future of this technology, the goal is to achieve 0% error.”

“We are very proud of this work,” Han added. “We will continue to improve this technology by building microfluidic chips that can perform very complex experiments and apply this technology in broader ranges of applications to more rapidly conduct research and development, all while keeping error as low as possible. Our focus is innovating the next generation of microfluidic technology.”

Provided by
Texas A&M University College of Engineering



Source link

Advance cancer Droplet Drugs hold Key microfluidics NextGeneration
Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email

Related Posts

A leap toward clean energy storage

May 25, 2025

Biosensor uses pH-responsive DNA nanoswitches for highly sensitive bladder cancer detection in urine

May 24, 2025

Photoresponsive cages show promise for tunable supramolecular electronics

May 24, 2025

Targeted nanoparticles show promise for more effective antifungal treatments

May 23, 2025

Dynamic visualizations expose how domain walls shift in ferroelectrics

May 23, 2025

Nanoscale spectroscopy detects vibrational signals from molecules in confined gaps

May 22, 2025

Comments are closed.

Top Articles
News

Nanoparticle immune therapy shows potential to halt pancreatic cancer spread

Medical

Scientists overcome major challenge in gene therapy and drug delivery

News

How Are Nanopores Used in Protein Analysis?

Editors Picks

A leap toward clean energy storage

May 25, 2025

Biosensor uses pH-responsive DNA nanoswitches for highly sensitive bladder cancer detection in urine

May 24, 2025

Photoresponsive cages show promise for tunable supramolecular electronics

May 24, 2025

Targeted nanoparticles show promise for more effective antifungal treatments

May 23, 2025
About Us
About Us

Your go-to source for the latest nanotechnology breakthroughs. Explore innovations, applications, and implications shaping the future at the molecular level. Stay informed, embrace the nano-revolution.

We're accepting new partnerships right now.

Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest
Our Picks

Beyond Electricity Exploring AI through Physical Reservoir Computing

February 12, 2024

Leading Dutch University Begins Search for New Director at their Renowned NanoLab MESA+ Institute to Spearhead Growth

August 30, 2023

Tissue-integrated sensitive glucose nanosenor uses inactive glucose oxidase enzyme for continuous monitoring

January 9, 2024

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest creative Nano Tech news from Elnano.com

© 2025 Elnano.com - All rights reserved.
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Cleantalk Pixel