Michael Mauk
Research Associate
Between microfluidics, biosensors, energy conversion devices and optoelectronics, you have a vast array of research interests. Which one are you currently spending most of your time with and can you elaborate on that topic?
Right now, I’m working on microfluidics, commonly known as “lab-on-a-chip.” Basically, what we’re trying to do is repeat the history of the electronics industry where they started with these bulky, expensive electronic devices and systems and shrunk them down to a tiny silicon microchip. We (and of course, many other groups around the world), are doing the same thing with biomedical devices, that is, reduce the bench top instruments and operations down to chip size. A plastic device about the size of a credit card, or even much smaller, could do all the typical bench top operations you would see in a chemistry or biomedical lab, such as a PCR or immunoassays, as well as purification processes such as chromatography or electrophoresis. More importantly, many diverse functions could be integrated on a single chip.
The ultimate purpose of this is to make devices for so-called “point-of-care” diagnostics. What is envisioned is that you would go to your doctor’s or dentist’s office, and he or she would collect a sample from you , such as a droplet of blood or saliva, and then inject the sample into one of these disposable lab-on-a-chip devices which would then give you a diagnostic report in about an hour or less. This would cut the medical labs and all other external testing out of the loop, with the result that before you left the doctor’s office, the doctor would already know what was wrong with you and what course of action to pursue. This type of point-of-care, decentralized medical diagnostics is analogous to what happened in computer technology: Small, cheap personal computers replaced big, expensive main frame computers. It would represent a real paradigm shift in the practice of medicine as we know it, with excellent prospects for dramatic cost reductions and improved care.
In our particular NIH-funded project, we’re working on a rapid diagnostics device to detect HIV in saliva. There already are rapid-tests that do this, based on immunoassays, but we’re making a test that combines immunoassays and nucleic acid testing using PCR with HIV-specific primers, This would make for a more specific and sensitive test. You can do the same thing for other pathogens, such as SARS or avian influenza, as well as cancer markers.
Beyond point-of-care & diagnostic applications, are there any other applications for microfluidics?
Bioterrorism detection is also a well-funded application of lab-on-a-chip technology. It’s similar since obviously a lot of bioterrorism agents are pathogens: viruses or bacteria or protein toxins. Many of the issues are the same: You’d want cheap devices because you’d want to make them pervasive . You’d want automated operation because you wouldn’t want something that would depend on a technician with special skills to operate. And of course, you’d want rapid results. So the criteria are very similar. In fact, there’s a lot of interaction between the people working in both of these fields, point-of-care diagnostics and bioterrorism detection. Low-cost, point-of-care cancer screening is also an up-and-coming application of lab-on-a-chip technology.
Do you find that most of your research is basic research or is it more applications-driven?
It’s more applications-driven. It’s not too hard to come up with the ideas for research because there’re a lot of bioassays that are used now in a conventional way with bench top protocols. So, we don’t have to invent any new science. Instead, we need to look at what biomedical researchers and clinicians are doing and figure out how we can translate this to a lab-on-a-chip format. So the engineers don’t really need to be too creative about finding new applications. The applications are already out there. It’s more about adapting a current medical test or laboratory procedure to a lab-on-a-chip technology. On the other hand, microfluidics will also enable many new types of tests, that are otherwise impractical or too expensive.
As a Research Associate and Principal Investigator who works on such interdisciplinary projects, do you have any difficulty hiring and managing people to work across these fields?
My observation is that more often than not we try to turn engineers into biotechnologists. We can usually do that because we’re generally focused on a narrow subtopic of biotechnology. However, it would be productive to make biotechnology people familiar with microfluidics as well. Most of the engineering we do is conceptually fairly straightforward. Biomedical people can understand the issues and they can make a substantial contribution to lab-on-a-chip development. But it is an interesting situation. You have two groups of people who traditionally have not had much interaction with each other. They have different vocabularies and different ways of thinking about things , as well as different problem solving skills. Putting them together to work on a project is interesting, if sometimes challenging, but I think there is no doubt this will be a common occurrence in the future. . I would advise people in engineering and the physical sciences, and who are interested in broadening their skills and career prospects, to consider the Hopkins master’s program in Biotechnology. I believe it can be a very good investment of your time and money. I think such people, with an engineering, computer science, or physical science degree, combined with a Masters in Biotechnology, would really standout in the biotech and biomedical field.
You have Bachelor of Engineering degrees in Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, and a Masters in Biotechnology. Did you know the career path you wanted to develop from the beginning?
I started working in material science and engineering, which is pretty interdisciplinary to start with. I worked with semiconductor materials and devices, a field which contains a good dose of physics, chemistry, metallurgy, and electronics. But semiconductor technology is never an end in itself. Semiconductor devices always have some kind of specific application that requires knowledge from another discipline. For instance, semiconductor devices are used in spectroscopy, and incorporated into many bioassay instruments. So, my initial interest in the biotech field was just to know more about the application of the things we were making in the lab: such as For example, various optical detectors with potential biomedical applications. That was my original motivation for enrolling in the Johns Hopkins Biotechnology program. While working full time, I took one or two evening or weekend classes each semester, including summers, and finished in about two and a half years.
Has what you learned through the Hopkins' Biotechnology program made an impact in your career?
Absolutely. I made the transition to lab-on-a-chip research by being an engineer who with a good foundation in biotechnology, which I gained through the Hopkins Biotechnology program. Engineering curriculums traditionally have almost no biology courses, although this is changing. For lab-on-a-chip in particular, and biomedical instrumentation in general, there’s a lot of electronics, optics, microfabrication, fluid-mechanics, and so forth that are done by engineers, and there’s a real need for people that can work between the disciplines of engineering and biotechnology. Having the biotechnology masters degree definitely enabled me to work at the interface between biology and engineering.
Are there any other benefits from the JHU program?
The laboratory courses I took were a great contribution to my biotechnology education.
I think the scope and the depth of the lab courses are a strong benefit. The hands-on experience really helps you fully grasp the concepts you learn in class. I personally never took any courses over the web, which, in retrospect, is kind of surprising since I commuted from Delaware to the Homewood or Montgomery County campuses, and the internet courses would have been much more convenient. It’s something I debated for a while. I think for people who work in a biotech lab, the online classes are a great option, but in my case, I really benefited from being in a classroom with other students, especially since the JHU students come from diverse working environments: industry, academia, and government. Interaction with the other students was definitely an important part of my education. For people such as myself, who had no real biology background, I would strongly recommend taking the laboratory courses. That’s where everything came together for me. . You can only read about things so much. It might mundane to people that work in a biotech lab every day, but if you’re totally new to the field and you’re learning everything from a text book, to have that lab experience is invaluable. The lab courses are fairly ambitious. But the lab skills learned in those courses are what helps me most in my current work.
Do you have any advice for students wanting to pursue an interdisciplinary career?
When you’re working full time, going back to school part-time is a big decision. It’s a sizeable investment of time and money. But I would say to people just entering or thinking of entering the program, it goes a lot faster than you think.. It’s hard work and might seem intimidating at first, especially if you haven’t been in school for a while, but overall it’s a rewarding and generally pleasant experience. In this program, you’ll find that you’re in school with a lot of people in a similar situation.. The biotech students are pretty social – you meet quite a few people doing a lot of interesting things. The program is not cut throat, and there’s a lot of group work so you do get to interact and collaborate with your fellow students. In fact, many of the classes are designed to foster this kind of student interaction.
You’re actually going to be teaching a class in the Biotechnology program. Can you give some more information about that?
This will be a class on microfluidics (‘lab-on-a-chip) and biosensors. . It’s an introductory course designed specifically for biotechnology students in the JHU Masters Program, so there won’t be any intense engineering. I want to emphasize this because I am concerned that prospective students might have reservations that the class is too far afield from their studies. The objective is an appreciation and understanding for lab-on-a-chip technologies as applied to biomedical applications, specifically, what their functions are, and how they are made and used. We’re also going to look at some aspects of lab-on-a-chip from the perspective of intellectual property: patents. One thing I’ve learned in this field is that patents are almost as important, if not more important, than the research articles in the scientific literature., Case studies will include applications for point-of-care detection of infectious diseases and cancer screening, bioterrorism detection, high-throughput research, and the like. The biology will be familiar to the students, just under the different guise of microfluidics. The technology aspects are not hard to grasp. I think students will find it very interesting and useful for to look at conventional biotech operations from the perspective of microfluidics, and they will gain a more profound understanding and appreciation of biotechnology methods. . For example, most biotechnologists are familiar with PCR’s, and we’ll discuss how to actually make PCR work on a small chip in a 10 microliter volume scale, and look at what are some of the issues with shrinking down a PCR reactor to that size, as well as how to measure out liquids, and isolate and detect nucleic acids on such a small scale. We’ll do the same for electrophoresis, cell sorting, cell lysis, and other standard laboratory methods. Prospective students can contact me at mgmauk@yahoo.com for more information about the course and any questions that might have. I would be very glad to hear from any students intrigued by this increasingly important field and who want to know more about the class.
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