IIT Madras alum’s device can grow your cells to make quicker diagnosis outside the body!
Archa Harikumar H
credits: Wikipedia
Medical tests which are carried out to make sure whether the person is affected with a disease or not itself takes a huge toll on the human body. Getting right medicines also takes time. Ikram Khan, a Chennai-based researcher has come up with a solution for this problem. He stated that he has developed a low-cost 3D-printed microfluidic bioreactor, which can grow a cell and one can carry out all the tests and trials on this cell to find the optimum medication or discover the disease without affecting the human body. For this project Ikram worked with researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-Chloe’ Delepine, Hayley Tsang, Vincent Pham and his advisors Prof. Anil Prabhaker, from IIT Madras and Prof Mriganka Sur for over a year and he also spent half a year in the labs of MIT.
The device can be of greatest importance to Cancer patients and completely change the way we look at pathology tests, states Ikram who finished his MS in Electronics and Instrumentation from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He also said that, when we go to meet a doctor, first of all he will do a check-up and will prescribe medicines. Then he will ask us to come after a week, to check whether there is any improvement. But if we are using this device we can make sure that the right medication is given in the first shot itself. In case of cancer patients, they undergo chemotherapy to determine which one is optimum. To avoid that, we can take the cancer cell and make hundreds of copies of that cell. By this we can determine which therapy would suit them the best. The main focus is what the device brings into this domain, which is not present, is that it is fully automated and it permits real-time imaging. We just need to allow the cells to grow on the chip and there is no need to take it out to perform the imaging process. While it grows and interacts with a drug we can study it. This device can also be used to study the effects of Coronavirus.
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The whole set up that can be connected to a computer for the analysis is as small as the palm of a regular human being and the chip is just 5 mm long and 3 mm thick.
For the present, they have grown brain organoids, tiny brains as part of their study. But Ikram said that they are working on building various cells like kidney cells on the chip and thereby making a virtual human being. They are planning to introduce pathogen in to that to know how it will interact.
At present, Ikram is working on ways to make the working of the device simple so that anyone at a pathology centre can use it. He also said that the installation may cost around 15 to 20 Lakh. It is very cheap when compared to the pieces of equipment that we are presently using. It will also cut down the labour load. Now one person can do what five people were doing before. Each chip need to replaced after every study and it can cost only $5 (around Rs. 370) making it cheaper for the patients also.