In the news

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Each cancer patient’s tumors have cells that look and act differently, making it difficult for scientists to determine treatments based on tumors grown from generic cell cultures in the lab. Now, thanks to a new 3D cell culture technique developed by Purdue University researchers, it may be possible to personalize treatment by understanding the contributions of different cell types in a tumor to the cancer’s behavior. “I see a future where a cancer patient gives a blood sample, we retrieve individual tumor cells from that blood sample, and from those cells create tumors in the lab and test drugs on them,” said Cagri Savran, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering. “These cells are particularly dangerous since they were able to leave the tumor site and resist the immune system.”

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Many patients with pancreatic cancer have only about a 10% chance of survival within five years of their diagnosis because they tend to become resistant to chemotherapy, past studies have indicated. A “time machine” that Purdue University engineers designed to observe pancreatic cancer behavior over time suggests a new drug testing approach that could help scientists better catch resistance. The researchers found that testing potential drugs on multiple tumor cell subtypes – rather than on just one cell subtype – can reveal drug resistance that may occur due to how different cancer subtypes interact with each other. Purdue engineers built a “time machine,” or microfluidic pancreatic tumor device, that simulates tumor growth over time. (Purdue University photo/Jared Pike) The study was recently published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Lab on a Chip.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University innovators are taking cues from nature to develop 3D photodetectors for biomedical imaging. The Purdue researchers used some architectural features from spider webs to develop the technology. Spider webs typically provide excellent mechanical adaptability and damage-tolerance against various mechanical loads such as storms. “We employed the unique fractal design of a spider web for the development of deformable and reliable electronics that can seamlessly interface with any 3D curvilinear surface,” said Chi Hwan Lee, a Purdue assistant professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering. “For example, we demonstrated a hemispherical, or dome-shaped, photodetector array that can detect both direction and intensity of incident light at the same time, like the vision system of arthropods such as insects and crustaceans.”

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University will lead a national initiative sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense to address the urgent need for engineering graduates to develop defense technologies, especially in the area of microelectronics. The Scalable Asymmetric Lifecycle Engagement Microelectronics Workforce Development program (SCALE) is a $19.2 million multi-university public-private-academic partnership that will be used for workforce development across engineering universities across the nation. Michael Kratsios, acting undersecretary of defense for research and engineering and chief technology officer of the United States, said, "A skilled technical microelectronics workforce is required to ensure success of DoD [Department of Defense] modernization initiatives."

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A rectangular robot as tiny as a few human hairs can travel throughout a colon by doing back flips, Purdue University engineers have demonstrated in live animal models. Why the back flips? Because the goal is to use these robots to transport drugs in humans, whose colons and other organs have rough terrain. Side flips work, too. Why a back-flipping robot to transport drugs? Getting a drug directly to its target site could remove side effects, such as hair loss or stomach bleeding, that the drug may otherwise cause by interacting with other organs along the way. The study, published in the journal Micromachines, is the first demonstration of a microrobot tumbling through a biological system in vivo. Since it is too small to carry a battery, the microrobot is powered and wirelessly controlled from the outside by a magnetic field.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A Purdue University team has developed a novel testing platform to evaluate how breast cancer cells respond to the recurrent stretching that occurs in the lungs during breathing. The technology is designed to better understand the effects that the local tissue has on metastatic breast cancer to study how metastases grow in a new tissue. “One of the key features of breast cancer is that most patients survive if the disease stays local, but there is a greater than 70% drop in survival if the cells have metastasized,” said Luis Solorio, a Purdue assistant professor of biomedical engineering, who co-led the research team. “However, once the cells leave the primary tumor, they are often no longer responsive to the drugs that initially worked for the patient. We wanted to develop a system that could help us better understand how the physiology of a new tissue space effected tumor cells upon invasion into the new organ.”

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — What happens when you bring three scientists of diverse disciplines together and give them the resources of two of the country’s top research facilities? In this case, they discover a new material that may help scientists learn more about neurological disorders and possibly take some big steps toward brain-machine interfaces. This pivotal discovery, making use of two user facilities at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, was led by three scientists from Purdue University. Their fields of study are so disparate that without this project, they may never have collaborated. The results of their combined efforts – published in Applied Materials and Interfaces, a magazine of the American Chemical Society – could lead to breakthroughs in each of their disciplines.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — To become more pervasive in daily life, quantum technology needs to better detect single particles of light, called photons, carrying quantum information. The problem is that each photon is a very weak signal, making it difficult for measurement devices to efficiently detect them. Purdue University engineers have proposed a new quantum resource that could help design the next generation of single-photon detectors. The type of quantum resource that the researchers discovered is called a “giant susceptibility,” which is a violent response of a system to a tiny perturbation. This response is necessary for converting a weak signal in the quantum domain to an amplified strong signal like those used by cell phones and other classical technology.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The rapid increase of life-threatening, antibiotic-resistant infections has resulted in challenging wound complications with limited choices of effective treatments. About 6 million people in the United States are affected by chronic wounds. Now, a team of innovators from Purdue University has developed a wearable solution that allows a patient to receive treatment without leaving home. The Purdue team’s work is published in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. A video showing the technology is available at https://youtu.be/UMZpDwYQZJM. “We created a revolutionary type of treatment to kill the bacteria on the surface of the wound or diabetic ulcer and accelerate the healing process,” said Rahim Rahimi, an assistant professor of materials engineering at Purdue. “We created a low-cost wearable patch and accompanying components to deliver ozone therapy.”

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — For quantum optical technologies to become more practical, there is a need for large-scale integration of quantum photonic circuits on chips. This integration calls for scaling up key building blocks of these circuits – sources of particles of light – produced by single quantum optical emitters. Purdue University engineers created a new machine learning-assisted method that could make quantum photonic circuit development more efficient by rapidly preselecting these solid-state quantum emitters. The work is published in the journal Advanced Quantum Technologies.