IC Architectures and Nano-Structured Electrodes for Applications in Personalized Therapy

Speaker: Sandro Carrara, Integrated Systems Laboratory (LSI), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne

Abstract:
Personalized therapy requires accurate and frequent monitoring of the metabolic response by treated patients. In case of high risk side effects, e.g. therapies with interfering anti-cancer molecule cocktails, direct monitoring of the patient’s drugs metabolism is essential as the metabolic pathways efficacy is highly variable on a patient-by-patient basis. Currently, there are no fully mature point-of-care bio-sensing systems for drugs metabolism monitoring directly in blood. To develop low-cost Point-of-care technology, the development of dedicated IC circuits is highly required. The aim of the present talk is to show solutions to develop point-of-care systems for drugs monitoring in personalized therapy. P450 enzymes are the considered probe molecules as they are key proteins directly involved in drugs metabolism of humans. Sensitivity improvement is ensured by means of enzyme integration onto electrodes structured with carbon nanotubes. Different CMOS designs are compared toward IC bio-chip developments. Results show that not all the CMOS circuitries proposed by literature are suitable for the aim and that special ASIC architectures are required to develop P450 based point-of-care devices for monitoring in personalized therapy.

Short Biography:
Sandro Carrara/EPFL - Sandro Carrara graduated in Electronics in Technical school of Albenga, got a Master in Physics from Genoa University and received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Padoa University. His main scientific interest is on electrical phenomena mediated by nano-structured and molecular thin films. He currently has a special focus on development of protein and DNA based CMOS chips. He has more then 60 international publications and 10 patents. In 1996, he won a NATO Advanced Research prize for his original contribution on the role of nano-particles size in single-electron conductivity. From 1997 to 2000, he was a member of an international committee at the ELETTRA Synchrotron. From 2000 to 2003, he was scientific leader of a National Research Program (PNR) in the filed of Nanobiotechnology. In 2006, he received the best 2006 referees’ award from Biosensor and Bioelectronics journal. He is Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, and referee of other eleven international journals. He is an internationally esteemed expert of the evaluation panel of the Academy of Finland in a research program for the years 2010-2013. He is the Publication Chair and a member of the Tutorial Chairs Board of the next IEEE international conference on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, (Beijing, November, 2009). He also is the Chair of a Workshop on Nano-Bio-Sensing paradigms and applications (Luzern, October, 2009). He has been Professor in Biophysics at Genoa University and in Nanobiotechnology at Bologna University. He recently joined the EPFL - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne - where he is Senior Research Scientist