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Yagmur Yildizhan
ESR-3
Topic:
Digital ELISA for ultrasensitive detection of blood-based brain tumour biomarkers
Supervisor:
Prof Jeroen Lammertyn, KU Leuven University, Belgium
Yağmur Yıldızhan is from Istanbul, Turkey. She obtained her degree in Physics (2016) at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. There, she worked on Bionic Microswimmers (bacteria based self-assembly of active particles) and earned the best project award by faculty members of the physics department. In 2018, she obtained her master's degree in Mechatronics Engineering at Sabanci University in Istanbul, and completed her master's thesis at the Biomechatronics Laboratory, focused on dielectrophoretic characterization and separation of tumor cells using 3D carbon-electrodes. Currently she is pursuing her PhD degree on “Digital ELISA for ultrasensitive detection of blood-based brain tumor biomarkers” in Biosensors group at KU Leuven, Belgium.
The major objective of ESR-3 is to develop a digital ELISA for detecting blood-based protein biomarkers (defined in WP3) with sensitivity down to femtomolar or attomolar levels and multiplexing capacity as well as to integrate developed assay with the low-cost digital microfluidics (DMF) platform. This objective will rely on the existing expertise of KUL in development of singleplex ELISA, microfabrication of DMF platform and integration of the two. To achieve this, ESR-3 will work on the following tasks: (1) development of digital ELISA for ultrasensitive and specific detection of one selected blood-based protein biomarker (defined in WP3); (2) development of multiplexed digital ELISA for bringing the bioassay from singleplex to multiplex concept while retaining the desired specificity and sensitivity when detecting multiple targets in one assay; these two tasks will be executed on electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) DMF chip that will serve as in-house high-end reference technology; (3) exploring different microfabrication protocols for producing low-cost microfluidic chips in high-throughput fashion and with simplified manufacturing protocol compared to the current clean room practices; (4) integration of developed multiplexed digital bioassay on a final microfluidic chip platform with the full automation of all assay steps.