A Sensor System for Precision Medicine

: Label-Free and Multivariate Monitoring of Cells and Their Molecular Products

• Biopharmaceuticals including cell, antibody, peptide, DNA, and protein needs to be monitored and assessed through various production process step to keep the consistent clinical outcome. This new type of 'drug' necessarily requires a new generation of non-destructive, label-free techniques that can characterize a single cell and their drug production at high-throughput, but otherwise leave it unadulterated before administration to the patient. 

• We are interested in the development of non-destructive and high-throughput analytic tools of cell & biomolecular products using label-free nanosensor technology, advanced hardware system, and AI analytics. Eventually, we hope to combine those tools into a continuous monitoring line enabled by each step of the feedback loop, and make a comprehensive biopharmaceutical monitoring platform for future therapeutics. We believe that this future patient-driven cell monitor will have a significantly short turnaround time and higher yields, so that eliminate the difference between each batch and show the consistent and improved clinical outcome. 

Our Label-Free Single Cell Analytics: Nanosensor Cytometry Using Photonic Nanojet

Cell populations show critical heterogeneities, and even subtle molecular differences can yield significant variations in total immune systems and therapeutic applications. However, the ability to profile the biomolecular heterogeneties has remained elusive over the past decades. We are developing a new class of nanophotonic single cell monitoring tools using nanosensor integrated microfluidics and deep learning, enabling users to do completely non-destructive and high-throughput biophysical & molecular quantification of single cells in real-time manner (Nature Communcations 2021, ACS Nano 2021, ACS Sensors 2023). We are working with medical institutes including Samsung Medical Center for CAR-T cell and immuno therapy process monitoring. Video: Cell lensing effect of single human monocyte in nIR fluorescent micro-channel.