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IGERT Trainee Research Highlights
Achievement/Results
Intergrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) trainees in the Nanomedicine Science and Technology program are mentored by world renowned research scientists in the field of nanomedicine. The research is highly interdisciplinary in nature and utilizing nanotechnology tries to address major medical challenges. Results from this research have resulted in several publications in peer-reviewed journals and presented at several national and international conferences.
Address Goals
Research accomplishment of two IGERT trainees are mentioned below that address the primary and secondary NSF strategic goals. IGERT trainee, Brian Plouffe, is working with Prof. Shashi Murthy on a project titled “Microfluidic Cell Separation Using Functionalized Magnetic Nanoparticles”. The project involves development of a point-of-care, disposable microfluidic device capable of efficient and rapid isolation of rare circulating tumor cells that are also know as CTCs. The approach hopes to provide a unique platform technology to detect cancer and capture circulating tumor cells. Moreover, this new microfluidic tool to capture CTCs could lead to the discovery of targets for further basic and clinical research. Towards this end, functionalized magnetic nanoparticles were synthesized and unique changes in their magnetic properties were observed. The results of this work were published in Journal of Applied Physics and presented at the 53rd Annual Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, Austin TX. This work as also presented internationally at 2009 Indo-U.S. Workshop on Advanced Magnetic Materials and their Applications, Indian Institute of Technology – Mumbai, India, Mar 2009.
IGERT trainee, Tatyana Chernenko is working on a project titled “Novel Approach to Imaging of Nano-Drug-Delivery Carriers Based on Raman Microscopy” under the guidance of Prof. Max Diem. The project involves the use of Raman micro-spectroscopic techniques to provide a non-invasive and non-destructive method for cellular imaging. This is being used to study the rapidly growing field of pharmaceutical drug delivery system, such as micelles and liposomes, for cell targeting that are increasing being used in cancer therapy and gene delivery. This method is very useful in understanding the kinetics of drug and gene delivery from within the cells. Several publications and conference proceedings have resulted from this research work.
