Mission

Our mission statement

The mission of the new Medical micro-Device Engineering Research Laboratory (M.D. - ERL) in chemical engineering is to explore the use of electrokinetics, specifically dielectrophoresis, in microdevices with the goal of developing medical diagnostic devices to detect and quantify diseases and disease progression. The ultimate goal is to detect a variety of blood diseases and return quantitative values for the number of infected / unhealthy cells relative to the number of healthy cells - all within a single drop of blood.

The development of medical microdevices could significantly improve medicinal diagnostic practices – at a fraction of the costs. Today the treatment of many common blood diseases is delayed by time-consuming and costly blood tests outsourced to specialty labs by physicians' offices. However, we are on the verge of technology that could compress this whole process into a 5-minute test in the doctor’s office, which could provide the patient with a positive or negative test result, along with quantitative information on how advanced the disease is, or the extent of the infection or ailment.

The term microdevices refers to a small (less than 3 inches in diameter) apparatus within which micro-sized chambers (0.001 mm to 0.1 mm in width and depth) have been constructed. Development of these devices is at a stage where external forces (pressure driven flow or applied electrical fields) are required to move liquids through the microchannels. One type of electrokinetic tool is dielectrophoresis - the application of non-uniform alternating current (AC) electric fields to suspensions of polarizable particles or cells. Due to the polarizability of cells, each species is susceptible to certain AC frequencies that are known as the cell’s resonant frequency. Genetically or geometrically similar cells have more similar, but still distinct, resonant frequencies. Preliminary dielectrophoretic screening experiments indicate that O+ red blood cells can be distinguished with greater than 95% confidence [Keshavamurthy 2008, Minerick 2008, Minerick 2003.

We currently have a blood donation program set up with the MSU Longest Student Health Center (see Donor Info page). If you are interested in donating blood, please contact Dr. Minerick at minerick@che.msstate.edu. Your identity will be kept confidential and all personnel are trained in accordance with the Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects in Research (IRB)

M.D. ERL is a certified Biosafety Level 2 laboratory. Feel free to download our biosafety resources that every researcher reviews each semester. For further information, please contact Dr. Patricia Cox in the Office of Regulatory Compliance on the Certification of this lab.