Louise Hansen: Highly Specific Quantification of Cytoskeletal Machinery and Structural Proteins with Microscale Electrophoretic Cytometry

SEMINAR (Zoom)

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Speaker

Louise Hansen

9:00 am via ZOOM

Title: Highly Specific Quantification of Cytoskeletal Machinery and Structural Proteins with
Microscale Electrophoretic Cytometry

Abstract

High-specificity measurements are necessary to detect the biomolecular changes that underpin
disease and drug resistance, and to, in turn, uncover new molecular targets for treatments and
therapies. The development of specialized microfluidic tools can empower other bioengineers to
interrogate the heterogeneous single-cell responses that drive cancerous tumor behavior and
elucidate new drug targets among cytoskeletal complexes and mechano-sensing proteins. To this
end, we introduce two microfluidic platforms that leverage size-based separation at the micro-
scale to provide the molecular specificity to measure mechanic and cytoskeletal proteins. First,
“Single-cell protein Interaction Fractionation Through Electrophoresis and immunoassay
Readout” (SIFTER) combines differential detergent fractionation, bi-directional electrophoresis,
and immunoassay steps into an arrayed microdevice for the simultaneous detection of protein
complexes and their respective monomers in 100s of individual cells. In addition, to clarify the
link between extracellular stiffness and resultant proteomic state of a cell, we report a first-in-
kind open microfluidic device that combines the molecular specificity of single-cell
polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis with a tunable substrate for on-chip culture.

BIO

Louise L Hansen: Louise L Hansen is a current Ph.D. candidate at the UC Berkeley-UCSF
Graduate Program in Bioengineering. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering at
University of Washington in 2017. At UW, Louise joined Professor Paul Yager’s research group,
designing new quantitative point-of-care methods. As a graduate student, Louise has been
developing new single-cell, micro-technologies for biological measurements in Professor Amy
Herr’s research group at UC Berkeley. With a special focus on advancing measurement methods
for the quantification of dynamic protein processes, such as cytoskeletal complexes and antibody
binding kinetics, Louise aims to advance cancer diagnosis and drug development methods.