Single Extracellular Vesicle Detection to Resolve Heterogeneity

Extracellular vesicles (EV) have gained immense interest due to their promising prognostic and diagnostic potential. They contain functional cellular components including proteins, mRNAs, and microRNAs, which represent the cells of origin, and they play an important role in intercellular communication by transferring these components to recipient cells. It has become apparent that EV are very heterogeneous due to selective shedding of proteins and nucleic acid cargo, the much smaller size and payload capacity of EV, and stochastic cellular effects. We are interested in developing highly sensitive, multiplexed single EV analysis techniques, which will allow a better understanding of their composition and heterogeneity and more efficient usage as biomarkers of disease. 

Mapping Single EV to Parent Cells for New Disease Signature Discovery

Deeper understanding of the relationship between cells and their EV can be a key to (i) find orthogonal disease signatures that can resolve the subtlety and heterogeneity between individuals and their disease profile, (ii) discover molecular messages certain types of cells are transferring to others via EV, and (iii) detect early disease programming molecular signatures from cells and their EV. There have been studies that have profiled bulk EV from single cells or single EV from bulk cells, however, because these methods provide bulk measurements from either EV or cells, direct mother cell-EV mapping and quantification of cell-EV stoichiometric ratios have not been possible. We aim to develop a droplet-based simultaneous single EV-single cell profiling technology for single mother cell-single EV mapping. This ultra-high sensitive tool will open up opportunities for new biological discovery and the development of early disease diagnostics.

Immune Biomarker Discovery for Neuropsychiatric Disorders

Neuropsychiatric disorders are a significant and increasing medical problem but there are still no good molecular biomarkers that can correctly diagnose them and provide better therapy guidance. Identifying diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for psychiatric disorders is particularly challenging due to the poor understanding of their mechanisms, the overlap of symptoms across different diseases, and inherent heterogeneity across individuals. Recently, more studies have shed light on the important relationship between the immune system and the nervous system and the brain. Based on the recent findings, we aim to use our highly multiplexed click chemistry tool to discover new immune biomarkers for various neuropsychiatric disorders.