Chemistry Weekly Seminar - Dr. Katherine Elvira, University of Victoria
Dr. Katherine Elvira, Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in New Materials and Techniques for Health Applications, University of Victoria, will present a seminar at 1:30 p.m. via Zoom.
Title
Artificial cells and microfluidic technologies for drug discovery
Abstract
Microfluidic (lab-on-a-chip) technologies should enable us to do science that is not otherwise possible. It costs $2.6 billion over 10-15 years to develop just one drug. Additionally, one of the major downsides of discovering new drugs is the fact that they have to be tested in animals, which is controversial because many drugs that work for animals do not actually work in humans. My lab creates microfluidic devices to build artificial cells and tissues from the bottom up to help with drug discovery. In our latest work, we have used these artificial cells to mimic how an orally administered drug moves from the intestine into an intestinal cell, and then from the cell into the blood stream. We are also developing artificial cell and tissue models that allow us to quantify how tumour cells develop resistance to chemotherapy agents and to model the blood-brain barrier.