Project description
Sound-based blood separation
In medicine, certain procedures call for specific components to be isolated from whole blood: examples of such procedures include platelet donation or isolation of T cells for immunotherapy. Conventionally, this isolation process is performed using centrifugation, a process requiring specific instruments that renders the process of blood re-infusion into the patient rather difficult. Funded by the European Research Council, the TAPAS project proposes to develop an alternative methodology based on acoustic separation that relies on differences in density and size of the different blood components. Researchers will test the selectivity of the approach and its impact on the structure and function of the different blood components.
Objective
Separation of blood components is of high importance in healthcare and often require fractionation of blood in its subcomponents by centrifugation. There are several scenarios that calls for improved resolution:
1. When blood is drawn from a donor and a specific cell type is extracted while returning remaining blood components.
2. In cancer immunotherapy where T-cells are isolated from the blood and then genetically reprogrammed to be re-infused in the patient where they seek up and destroy cancer cells.
3. Circulating tumor cells, which are involved in the process of formation of metastases in cancer patients, can be detected and monitored by extracting cancer cells in large volumes of blood.
4. Improving the quality and reducing the number of manual procedures in diagnostic instrumentation that analyzes blood.
Centrifugation has the fundamental drawback of having rotating parts, and thereby taking up space and being difficult to implement for flow-through processing which is desirable both for integration in analytical equipment and for processing blood for continuous re-infusion into a person.
We will investigate an alternative to centrifugation wherein blood components are separated by a sound field. Cells will be separated based on differences in density and size while flowing through an acoustic separator module. Recent ERC-funded research indicates that this approach is feasible, but three scientific questions has been identified with fundamental impact on the commercial potential of this technology:
1. How selectively can sub-groups of blood cells be separated by acoustic separation?
2. Can acoustic separation be scaled for high throughput applications?
3. Can acoustic separation affect blood cells?
To address this, my team will design and build two prototype systems for whole blood processing and evaluate the quality and throughput of the separation with the ultimate goal of bringing this technology to the market for the benefit of society.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine oncology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine immunology immunotherapy
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC-POC - HORIZON ERC Proof of Concept Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2022-POC2
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22100 Lund
Sweden
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