On October 25th, 2017, Professor Frances S. Ligler of North Carolina State University visited IBP and gave a BEI Shizhang Lecture entitled Microfluidic solutions for new therapeutic systems and simpler diagnostics, which was hosted by Prof. ZHANG Xian-En.

Frances S. Ligler is the Lampe Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University and School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the past chair of the Bioengineering Section, and a current Councillor of the National Academy of Engineering. Her currently work in the fields of biosensors, tissue-on-chip, and microfluidics. She has over 400 full-length publications and patents, which have led to eleven commercial biosensor products. She is the winner of the American Chemical Society’s Service to Analytical Chemistry Award, the US Navy Superior Civilian Service Medal, the Chemical Society Hillebrand Award, the Navy Merit Award, and so on.

Microfluidic devices were motivated by the desire to move very small fluid volumes and mimic laboratory procedures in an automated and less costly manner. In addition to mimicking laboratory manipulations on a small scale, microfluidic systems have entirely new capabilities, e.g. microfluidics systems have been reported that carry out thousands of operations simultaneously, create new materials, sequencing genes, and manipulate individual cells. Professor Ligler described how microfluidics are being used to make living capillaries. By collaborating with Drs, she incorporate the capillaries into a fibrin patch containing cardiac stem cells and implant the patches in rats to repair broken hearts. The second device that Professor Ligler is currently working on provides a means to simplify microfluidic systems used for diagnostics and small cell cultures.

After lecture, Professor Ligler had a further discussion with Professor Xian-En Zhang’s team.

Before the lecture, Professor Ligler gave a plenary speech at the First China Forum on Biosensors, Biochips and Nanobiotechnology that was jointly sponsored by IBP and the BBN Division of the Chinese Society of Biotechnology.