Congratulations to Dr. Jonas Nikoloff for passing his PhD Defense!
"A Microfluidic Approach for Analyzing Extracellular Vesicles from Single Cells"
Comittee Members
Prof. Petra S. Dittrich, ETH
Prof. Barbara Treutlein, ETH
Prof. Klaus Eyer, ETH
Prof. Daniel Müller (Chair), ETH
Abstract
Eukaryotic organisms consist of a heterogeneous entirety of cells of which each secretes a myriad of extracellular vesicles (EVs). EVs share some biochemical properties, but differ significantly in their formation. How do cells form these vesicles and why? Can we use the content of EV representing the cell of origin for diagnostic purposes? The rich toolbox of microfluidics easily allows for creating experimental environments to further push the boundaries for EV analysis. Using microfluidics we focus on the diagnostic potential of EVs: We identify the phenotypic fingerprints of different human tissues to demonstrate the power of single-cell derived EVs as diagnostic biomarkers. Analyzing the membrane specific composition we retrieve information about the origin of EVs and extract the phenotypic fingerprint of the tissue of origin for a faster and more sensitive cancer characterization from liquid-biopsies.