In this work, we propose using a microfluidic probe (MFP) to quantify heterogeneity of drug response in tissue sections by periodic sampling and spatial mapping of the tissue section.
Tumors, as all biological organisms, provide a wide range of variability in their structure and expression. This variability manifests itself in the macro scale – the morphology itself, and also in the micro-scale – the difference in molecular expression. These molecular variations are expressed as inter-tumor and intra-tumor heterogeneity. We are developing a real-time drug screening platform based on MFPs to characterize spatially resolved drug responses directly on tumor tissue samples. This project is at the interface of clinician-scientists at the University Hospital Zurich and the deMello Lab at ETH. You will learn how to handle patient tissues as well as standard read-outs of biological assays and cutting-edge engineering methods.
The application of spatial information in tumor heterogeneity will be in basic research and clinical use to adapt tumor therapy based on molecular heterogeneity.
Contact person:
Prerit Mathur: prerit.mathur@chem.ethz.ch