Team:SMMU-China/Human Practices detail 2
When we completed the preliminary design of the project, we interviewed professor Liu and consulted him about how to improve our project. Professor told us two major dilemmas of liquid biopsy. The first dilemma is that the content of specific marker used for tumor detection is very low. The second is about the specificity. The body works like a complete system and there will some healthy cell expressing the tumor markers. So, how to balance the dilemma of tumor detection sensitivity and specificity? This is a significant issue for all tumor detection project. To some extent, our team answers this question through modeling.
Professor Liu also show us about his latest research about the tumor detection by detection CTC (circulating tumor cell).
Interdisciplinarity is the current tendency in all fields. One of the most closely connected discipline to medicine is materials science, and nanotechnology is one of the most advanced field. Up to now, a certain number of materials have been proved as safe and biocompatible, and to contain the genetic engineered cell within a nanocontainer before its functioning will not only guarantee the biosafety of our device, but also bring out more potentials of getting improved. Just as our device, nanocontainer could serve as a platform with endless possibilities.
Since we were looking for a mature nanomaterial. Professor Liu recommended us to select microcapsules made of Alginate Polylysine. Alginate Polylysine has been manufactured as microcapsules containing insulin-producing cells for many years. Both its biosafety and biocompatibility have been verified. With microcapsules, the therapeutic engineered cells are immobilized and immunoprotected, which means our patients are free of immunosuppressants. Normally speaking, even having strictly obeyed the protocol, immunosuppressants will cause many side effects such as obesity and infection. Besides, function of microcapsules will get improved with the development of nantotechonolgy.
