An innovative cell separation technique, used to diagnose disease, is being harnessed to solve a diverse range of real-world problems. It’s even helping brewers master the perfect beer.
Dr Majid Warkiani’s research into cell separation and cancer sits at the interface of engineering, biology and medicine.
His multidisciplinary research interests are unified by the drive to develop innovative biomedical tools that are able to traverse the gap from the lab bench to the bedside – a vision he has achieved through a number of commercialisation activities.
Dr Majid Ebrahimi Warkiani
This current research is a long detour from Warkiani’s initial focus on water quality but reflects a belief that cross-disciplinary collaboration is essential for meaningful progress.
“The big problems like cancer, like cardiovascular disease; these are not the type of problems that one group with one set of skills can solve. We will only tackle the problems if scientists, engineers and biologists talk together and chip in from different perspectives.”
The big problems like cancer, like cardiovascular disease; these are not the type of problems that one group with one set of skills can solve. We will only tackle the problems if scientists, engineers and biologists talk together and chip in from different perspectives.
— Dr Majid Warkiani
By way of example, he points to a conversation with a Singaporean physician that led to his development of a ‘cancer dialysis system’.
The system is based on a biochip Warkiani developed as a screening tool for cancer that can separate larger cancerous cells from normal cells and is currently in use in many laboratories around the world.
The Singaporean doctor suggested to Warkiani that an upscaled version of the technology combined with a mild (or radiation) chemotherapy could be used to eradicate cancer cells from patients’ blood, lessening the chances of the cancer metastasising, or of relapse.
Cross-faculty collaboration has formed the basis of Warkiani’s work at UTS.
“UTS gave me the freedom to build the laboratory I want with all the equipment that I need. So now we have a world-class laboratory with all the necessary tools, and given we are in close proximity to the School of Science, we can jump across there and collaborate,” he says.
At UTS, Warkiani is also continuing to refine the cancer dialysis system that earned him a place in the 2016 MIT Technology Review Top 10 Innovators Under 35 in the Asia-Pacific.
But Majid’s innovations are not confined to cancer treatment.
He has applied his cell separation technique in collaborations that include improving beer quality for South Australian brewer, Coopers, algal-based biotechnology research and pre-natal screening for genetic disorders. It is also being used to separate stem cells to better understand their therapeutic potential.
Warkiani is also developing microscale tumour models (known as tumour-on-a-chip) that will eliminate the need to test drugs and treatments on animals, and also novel miniaturised systems, or ‘labs on a chip’, that can be used in basic research.
Warkiani says as awareness of the benefits of microfluidics and microtechnology grows, his team at UTS is well placed to take the lead – particularly given the cutting-edge additive and advanced manufacturing technology available at the UTS ProtoSpace facility, which he ranks as among the best he has seen.
“In the past five to 10 years, people of different disciplines have started to appreciate the power of these technologies, especially in medical sciences where all the information they are trying to collect is from the cellular or tissue level,” he says.
“They need some tools to manipulate or study things at the single cell level, so that's where our expertise will come in. We will build those tools for them using our engineering skills, the facilities that we have here and the techniques we have developed over the past few years.”
Research team
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Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Engineering
