BME Seminar - Purifying and Characterizing Extracellular Vesicles: A collaboration between Academia and Industry

Biomedical Engineering Research Seminar - Mehdi (Aslan) Dehghani, Ph.D. '20

Purifying and Characterizing Extracellular Vesicles: A collaboration between Academia and Industry

Abstract: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane vesicles secreted by cells and distributed widely in all biofluids as well as cell conditioned media. EVs range in size from 30 -1000 nm and carry proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids. Over the past decades, interest in EVs as diagnostic and therapeutic tools is expanding due to their demonstrated roles in physiological and pathological processes. The first step to better understand the biological functions of EVs and to utilize them as therapeutic and diagnostic tools is to purify them. In order to evaluate and compare different purification approaches, reliable and accurate characterization techniques are required. However, EVs are highly heterogeneous with respect to size, cells of origin, composition, and surface protein expression and due to their small size and heterogeneity, quantitative and qualitative analysis of EVs remains challenging. I will share my academic and industrial research on developing new approaches for purification and characterization of EVs. I will also discuss the importance of collaboration between academia and industry to overcome existing challenges of the field and how it could lead to EV based products for therapeutic and diagnostic applications.

Bio: Dr. Aslan Dehghani is a scientist and bioengineer for exosome applications in the corporate research team of Sartorius. He graduated in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. In 2020, he earned his Ph.D. degree in Microsystems Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. He focused on developing new approaches for purification and characterization of extracellular vesicles.