The mission for the NIH BioMEMS Resource Center (BMRC) is to bridge between microelectromechanicai systems (MEMS) and biomedical community to provide powerful microtechnologies to biomedical and clinical investigators. At its inception, the focus of the BMRC research was on the development of microfluidic chips for cell sorting, especially for fractionation of blood into its key components as well as the creation of living single cell arrays. In 2008, BMRC was renewed to expand its research portfolio to include rare cells with tremendous clinical potential, and more complex dynamic tissue microarrays. As we look to the next five years, BMRC is uniquely positioned to help advance the field because it maintains a core research program in the fundamentals of BioMEMS, while pushing the field forward with preclinical studies, translation activities, development of platform technologies, and disease modeling. To this end, we focused our efforts on 4 new Technology Research & Development (TR&D) Projects. In TR&D Project 1, we will develop two innovative technologies for the isolation of rare cells in blood or other bodily fluids. In TR&D Project 2, we will develop a point-of-care technology for rapid enrichment of fungi from blood for early diagnosis of fungemia. In TR&D Project 3, we will establish a multicompartment micro-device containing a 3-D skin compartment and a lymph node compartment, connected by microchannels. In TR&D Project 4, we will develop microfabricated devices with smart functionalities to examine brain injury including epilepsy and traumatic brain injury. Our TR&D Projects have spawned more than 40 well-integrated collaborative and service projects that feed into our fundamental technology research. The training activities include ad-hoc training, laboratory courses & workshops, and didactic courses. The dissemination activities are very broad encompassing outreach to lay press, scientific publications, web presence, symposia & meetings, and technology transfer. Thus, BMRC has been very successful in developing enabling technologies at the interface of MEMS & biomedicine, and disseminating them to the biomedical community.
MRC continues to represent a significant potential for biomedical advances through its mission to develop and disseminate innovative microtechnologies with a broad range of applications varying from diagnostics, therapeutics, biomarker discovery, drug screening to disease models.
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