Haitian Scientific Society 2021 Seminar Series

Integrated Microsystem for in vitro Tumor-Treating Field Potency Assessments

Marc Dandin PhD
(Carnegie-Mellon)

Abstract:

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) refers to grade IV gliomas which are among the deadliest primary brain tumors. For instance, GBM patients typically have a mean survival time of less than 18 months. Recently, tumor-treating fields (TTFields) concomitantly applied with temozolomide (TMZ) have shown significant improvements in progression-free times in GBM patients by adding an additional 5 months to their mean survival time. TTField therapy has gained FDA approval for treatment of newly diagnosed and recurrent GBM disease, and clinical trials are currently underway for studying its efficacy in treating non-CNS solid tumors. TTFields are low intensity alternating electric fields that are believed to interrupt the mitosis process when applied to a tumor. While TTField therapy is promising, its use is not widespread. This lack of adoption is attributable to several factors. For example, there are currently no established neuroimaging tools available to provide response information that is specific to TTFields. Additionally, there are currently no pre-treatment methods for exhaustively assessing combination TTField treatment potency on a patient-specific basis. This talk will focus on the latter challenge. Our lab is developing an in vitro testing platform capable of exploring the parameter space of TTField therapy. When used with a patient’s own resected cells or with patient-derived organotypic models, our platform will provide a means for assessing combination TTField treatment potency via high-throughput and real time quantitative measures of TTField interactions with glioblastoma cells. Our approach consists of an integrated biochip capable of measuring cell life cycle events under programmable TTField exposure patterns and chemotherapeutic drug loads.

Biographical Sketch:

Dr. Dandin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University as of July 2019. He previously co-founded and led a start-up company in the medical diagnostics arena. Furthermore, he worked as a technical specialist in intellectual property matters at several law firms in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. For his research and entrepreneurship efforts, Dr. Dandin was awarded the University of Maryland Bioengineering department's Robert E. Fischell Fellowship in Biomedical Engineering, the Electrical Engineering department’s inaugural Jimmy H. C. Lin Award for Entrepreneurship, and the Mechanical Engineering department’s Certificate of Excellence. In 2017, he was elevated to the grade of Senior Member of the IEEE in recognition of his professional standing.

Lab url: https://icbiolab.org
CMU Faculty page: https://www.ece.cmu.edu/directory/bios/dandin-marc.html

Date and time:

Saturday, February 27, 2021
12:45 PM—2:30 PM

Zoom Meeting Link:

https://umassboston.zoom.us/j/98565356504