Engineering flow cytometry solutions for critical health applications

Steven Graves
University of New Mexico

Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 3:00pm
Engr IV Maxwell Room 57-124

Abstract

Flow cytometry is indispensible in a modern clinical laboratory where it is widely used to detect the levels of specific blood cell types to diagnose and monitor many critical diseases ranging from leukemia to AIDS. Notably, it is considered the gold standard for determining CD4+ T-cell levels for HIV+ patients. Despite the many important uses for flow cytometers in the clinic, their size, expense, and use of large quantities of highly purified sheath fluid have prevented their use in resource poor areas of the world. Furthermore, its cellular analysis rate is too slow to make it useful for diagnostics that require truly rare event detection capabilities, such as detection of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) and fetal cells in maternal blood. To fill these glaring technology gaps, we have developed a variety of acoustic and inertial focusing flow cytometers that enable low cost, sheathless, and highly parallel flow cytometry. In this presentation we will demonstrate the use of both inertial and acoustic focusing to create flow cytometers that do not use liquid sheath, provide high cell analysis rates at low linear velocities, and utilize low cost & low power components. In this talk, I will present the development of all aspects of the instruments from flow cells to data systems. Several critical prototype instruments will be fully described, including the low cost portable acoustic flow cytometer, which is sheathless, battery operable, and costs under $2000 to construct. Such an instrument will have a great impact on the monitoring of CD4+ levels in resource poor areas of the world. Additionally, I will present the development highly parallel acoustic flow cytometers using highly multimode standing planar acoustic waves. These instruments have the potential to analyze millions of cells per second and would be of great value in the detection of CTCs in cancer patients.

Biography

Steven Graves received his Ph. D. in Biochemistry, Molecular and Microbiology at the Pennsylvania State University (1998) for studying the cloning, purification, and kinetic characterization of the large subunit of human mitochondrial DNA polymerase. Following his graduate work, he worked for a year in industry before being hired by at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 2001, he joined the Bioscience Division and became a Research Lead of the National Flow Cytometry Resource. In 2005, he was awarded an NIH Phased Innovation Award which resulted in the development of the Portable Acoustic Cytometer, for which he and his colleagues received a R&D100 Award in 2007. In 2008 he joined the University of New Mexico as Associate Director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering and Associate Professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering. He has several patents and patents pending, over thirty publications, and is the Director of an incoming graduate program in Biomedical Engineering at the University of New Mexico.