Albert’s project titles is “Quantifying extracellular presentation of engineered proteins on shear-derived large extracellular vesicles from tumour cells”. Albert’s aim is to express protein of interest on kidney cells and investigate whether these proteins are retained on surface of large extracellular vesicle they produce. Albert is co-supervised by Dr Francisca Ceroni from Chemical Engineering.

Amir joined the Au Lab as an MRes Cancer Technology candidate in January 2024 and he will be co-supervised by Dr Anastasios Karadimitris in the department of immunology and inflammation. Dr. Karadimitris has discovered a distinct class of T cells called Invariant Natural Killer T cells which have huge potential as novel cancer immunotherapy. A major challenge however is screening and selecting the optimal iNKT cells to progress into preclinical studies. Hence, Amir will aim to engineer a novel microfluidic cellular avidity platform in Dr. Sam's lab for the optimised selection of iNKT cells equipped with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) against Myeloma and Leukaemia cells. These microfluidic devices use shear stress to probe the avidity (sum affinity) of T cells to target the tumour cells of interest. Before coming to Imperial College, Amir studied Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, where he completed multiple immunology and immunotherapy courses and projects . Amir's final year project involved assessing the effects of antioxidants on human breast carcinoma and its microenvironment as potential novel therapies. Amir aims to continue towards a PhD in immunotherapy after the completion of his Masters.

Yuktha joined the Au lab as part of her Master’s project for her undergraduate degree at Imperial. She is learning tissue culture techniques and microfluidic channel fabrication to develop a Vessel-on-chip device with the prospect of studying endothelial cells and vasculogenic mimicry (VM). She is being supervised by the Post-doc Salime and co-supervised by Shusei to learn his microfluidic channel fabrication technique. The end prospect is to learn more regarding VM and how it interacts and could influence endothelial growth.

Bio: I did my undergraduate studies in Biological Sciences at South China Agricultural University (SCAU) and University College Dublin (UCD) with a double degree. In addition, I have participated in Integrated Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Research Project: Intracellular PCR combined with Flow Cytometry for Parkinson's Disease and other Disease Detection and research on The Development and Mechanism of Treatment of Depression. and I successfully published a paper on the topic of Using Nanoparticles and Nano-drugs in the Treatment of Pancreatic Cancer. I enrolled in Imperial College London in 2023 to pursue an Engineering degree in Engineering for Biomedicine. I also joined Au Lab in January 2024.

Ernie has recently joined the Au Lab for his MEng Biomedical Engineering Final Year project. He focuses on developing a capillary-on-chip model, which consists of capillary-sized hydrogel microchannels with a confluent endothelial monolayer (HUVEC). Drawing inspiration from Shusei's publication in 2023, Ernie is enhancing the chip fabrication method by optimising hydrogel properties for effective endothelialisation. He is currently learning microfluidic chip fabrication, polymer/hydrogel synthesis, and tissue culturing techniques under the supervision of Shusei and Salime. The primary goal of this capillary-on-chip model is to provide an in-vitro platform for research into cancer metastasis under a physiological environment similar to in-vivo capillaries.

Marwin joined the Au Lab as an MRes Medical Device Design and Entrepreneurship candidate in 2023. He is working on automating a microfluidic device that selects the best candidates of T-cells by testing their cell avidity, which is how strongly they bind to cancer cells. He is also conducting a market analysis for the device, and will develop a business plan as part of his Master’s thesis.