International Symposium on LifeChips 2006

Cells, Microchips, and Clinical and Biological Information
Microfabrication techniques that have revolutionized the electronics industry are now poised to revolutionize the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and biomedical device industries. The two leading applications of microfabrication in biology include "genes-on-a-chip" to monitor the expression level of potentially all genes in humans or various model systems and organisms simultaneously, and "lab-on-a-chip" type devices to perform biochemistry in microchambers. Equally exciting is the fact that biomedical application of microfabricated devices is no longer limited to non-living systems such as genes-on-a-chip or lab-on-a-chip. Recent advances in the understanding of cellular behavior in microenvironments have started to pave the way towards living micro-devices. The ability to integrate cells with microdevices is important for controlling cellular interactions on a sub-cellular level, for obtaining highly parallel, statistically meaningful readouts over large cell populations, and for miniaturizing instrumentation towards minimally-invasive, portable, fast, inexpensive devices. The rich assortment of living microdevices that can be built using BioMEMS techniques has important applications in fundamental cell biological studies, tissue engineering, cell separation and culture devices, diagnostics, and high-throughput drug screening tools. This presentation will provide an overview of some of the key advances and remaining challenges related to the combination of microfabrication technology and living cells and a sampling of a broad spectrum of exciting opportunities and promises in biology and medicine.

Biography
Dr. Mehmet Toner is a Professor of Surgery and Biomedical Engineering at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Dr. Toner is also an affiliated faculty member at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He serves as the Director of the Microsystems Bioengineering Facility at MGH. Dr. Toner received a BS degree from Istanbul Technical University and a MS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), both in Mechanical Engineering. Subsequently he completed his PhD degree in Medical Engineering at Harvard University- MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 1989. Dr. Toner is a member of many national and international professional committees. He serves as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, Associate Editor of the Annual Reviews in Biomedical Engineering, member of the Editorial Board of the journals of Cryobiology and Cryo-Letters. Dr. Toner’s research interests are focused on three areas: cryobiology, tissue engineering, and microsystems bioengineering. In 1994, he was recognized by the Y.C. Fung Young Faculty Award in Bioengineering from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). In 1997, he won the John F. and Virginia B. Taplin Faculty Fellow Award given by Harvard and MIT for his contribution to these two institutions in bioengineering research and education. In 2000, Dr. Toner was selected to become a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.