Microfluidics and Single Molecule Fluorescence Spectroscopy in Cancer Research – Applications at the Micro-, Nano- and Molecular Scale

Microfluidics and fluorescence confocal spectroscopy have great potential in various biomedical applications. However, their adoption has not been as rapid as one might hope. This is due in part to the intrinsic limitation of the technologies, and also the lack of compelling applications to encourage their widespread use. This thesis will focus on a number of specific applications for the technologies, broadly within the boundaries of cancer research. In the first part, by leveraging the unique properties of droplet microfluidics, and overcoming the low-throughput barrier through a robust design suitable for parallelization, I show the ability of the technique to generate clinically relevant quantities of microbeads for embolic therapy. In the subsequent two parts, by combining microfluidics and fluorescence spectroscopy, I demonstrate the ability to probe the composition of single nanoparticle and single telomere molecules. In the former, this revealed remarkable variations between ostensibly similar particle preparations, and goes some way towards explaining the different efficacies of gene delivery between experiments. In the latter, we developed a powerful new tool that will help simplify the telomere length measurement process, and will further elucidate the role of telomeres in cancer biology. Taken together, these applications will serve to demonstrate the untapped potential of these technologies, as well as serve as inspiration for further exploration into applying these technologies to areas of need