Current Lab Members

Sean H. Kevlahan
PhD Candidate

Email: skevlahan@gmail.com

Education

B.S. Biochemistry, 2009.
Hofstra University, Hempstead NY

Research

“Isolation of Intestinal Stem Cells Through the Implementation of Cell Adhesion Based Microfluidic Devices”

The primary goals of my research is to design an adhesion-based microfluidic system to isolate intestinal subpopulations from a cellular amalgamation utilizing an in vitro intestinal culture model. From the segregated intestinal subpopulations, intestinal progenitor cells will be identified with stem cell markers. The isolated intestinal stem cells will be tested for is ability to differentiate in vitro into functional intestinal cells.

The fundamental objective is to cultivate whole or partial organs to replace diseased or damaged tissue. The intestine is a complex tissue with a highly distinctive surface, it predominantly contains villi which are finger-like projections as well as structures called crypts. State of the art research into the cultivation of intestinal tissue have been carried out using clusters of primary intestinal cell obtained from digested tissue. Multiple cell types are cultured in clusters, rather than as homogeneous cultures, because these delicate primary cells require complex cell-cell interactions in order to remain viable. A major hurdle in this field is the constraint of not being able to control composition within clusters and the physical layout of the clusters. Furthermore, a significant challenge, with respect to intestinal stem cells, is to determine the characteristics (such as surface marker expression and gene expression) due to the fact that these cells are very difficult to isolate and study.

My doctoral research project aims to address these gaps using microfluidic cell separation techniques. These techniques have the ability to achieve separation of multiple cell types from heterogeneous suspensions with sufficient speed to retain viability and with high purity to provide homogeneous suspensions for characterization and co-culture.