Cowboys for Cancer Research funded Dr. Reza Foudazi (PI), Dr. Jessica Houston (co-PI), and Dr. Hassan Pouraria (postdoctoral researcher) for the project entitled “Elasto-inertial microfluidics platforms for enrichment of exosomes for cancer diagnosis.” Exosomes are clinically important non-invasive biomarkers for cancer prognosis, treatment selection, and treatment monitoring. They are the smallest extracellular vesicles (EVs) with characteristic size in the ∽30–150 nm range. However, isolation of exosomes in biological fluids containing high $40K of proteins, other EVs and cells emerges as a challenging task. This work uses computational fluid dynamics for viscoelastic liquids to design a microfluidics platform for exosome isolation.
