SBIR Phase II: Developing suspended microchannel resonators as a platform for personalized medicine in cancer

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to identify potential therapies for a multiple myeloma (MM) patients. Newly diagnosed MM is typically sensitive to a variety of therapies, but relapse is common in later stages. Personalized analysis would improve treatment decisions. This project will develop new testing for personalized medicine. Although the initial target is MM, this can potentially be applied to other cancers or diseases. Personalized medicine can lead to reduced healthcare costs, optimized drug development, and improved patient care. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will help develop methods and techniques that will be used to offer new tests for guiding the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM) patients. The test relies on resolving changes of cancer cells collected from patients upon exposure to various drug options by measuring the mass of individual cells. Today MM is the second most common hematologic malignancy in the world. Unfortunately, today there are no biomarkers to define therapeutic susceptibility of MM patients to identify a personalized treatment regimen. This project aims to address this problem by developing a high-throughput single-cell mass measurement platform based on suspended microchannel resonators (SMR) to resolve the effects of the drugs on the cancer cells. In this project a new generation of SMR chips with linked single-cell imaging, image processing and cell classification will be developed to analyze a 20-drug panel in three hours. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.