Using Microfluidic Devices for Gene Therapy
At Carnegie Mellon University, researchers are engineering cutting-edge micro- and nanoscale technologies that interact with living cells in unprecedented ways. Using microfluidic chips inspired by computer chip manufacturing, they manipulate viscoelastic, non-Newtonian fluids to stretch cells and create nanoscale openings—all without physical contact. This allows DNA and proteins to enter cells safely and efficiently, opening the door to faster, safer, and more affordable gene therapies like CAR-T. By blending complex fluid mechanics with biomolecular engineering, the team aims to democratize the future of medicine—and train the next generation of innovators along the way.
Transcript
00:00:08 Our group is developing microscale and nanoscale technologies that interact with living systems in new ways. We develop microfluidic devices that we make using technology that was originally developed by the microelectronics industry to make computer chips. And in those devices, we take advantage of the surprising fluid mechanics of viscoelastic flows and non-Newtonian flows. One thing that's challenging about this research is that we're interested in phenomena that occur on timescales that are too short to see with regular microscopes. So we're also developing new optical techniques to understand what's going on inside of our microfluidic devices. One project that's going on in our lab right now is that we're developing an approach to perform a type of surgery on millions of individual cells within seconds. We've developed a microfluidic chip, which takes advantage of the non-Newtonian fluid mechanics of viscoelastic solutions to
00:01:11 stretch cells within a microfluidic device without ever touching the cell with a solid surface. This allows us to tear nanoscale holes in the membrane of the cell, and those holes allow biomolecules like DNA and proteins to diffuse into cells, and then they reseal within a few seconds so the cells can continue to survive. To paraphrase William Gibson, "The future of medicine is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." One of the major goals of our work is to improve the safety and accessibility of gene therapies. Gene therapies are a new type of medicine that involves making changes to the DNA of some particular cells in our bodies with the goal of treating a disease. And they're tremendously exciting because they have the potential to treat disease at its source. However, they're also the most expensive medicines ever produced. One of the reasons these therapies are so expensive is because they're also extremely complex to
00:02:14 manufacture. One area that we're hoping to have an impact in the near term is in the manufacturing of a type of gene therapy called CAR-T. CAR-T is a therapy where the patient's T-cells, a type of immune cell, are isolated from their blood, and then genetically modified to express a new gene that will target those cells to treat a disease. We want to have an impact on reducing the cost and also increasing the safety of CAR T therapies. One really exciting thing about working on these problems here at CMU is that we have experts both in complex fluid mechanics and also in biomolecular engineering. So I think it's a really exciting time to be working on these problems in this area, and I think it's going to make for a really excellent training environment for our students as well.