Tran Ngoc Huyen Nguyen

Postdoctoral Scholar

University of Washington

Tran Ngoc Huyen Nguyen is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington. Her research interests focus on developing high-performing point-ofcare/implantable biosensors and microfluidic devices that can be applied to cancer and women’s reproductive health research. Tran received her B.S. in Chemical Biology from the College of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University, where her research examined glutamate excitotoxicity after spinal cord injury using implantable microsensors to reliably measure extracellular glutamate with high spatial and temporal resolution. The research was supported by the Lynn Graduate Fellowship and the Global Research Outreach program of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. Her current projects build upon her previous training to help fabricate and characterize microfluidic devices to address current questions of preclinical drug testing platforms for cancer research. She was awarded the Catalytic Collaboration Training Award from Brotman Baty Institute in 2021.

Biosensor Platforms for Continuous Monitoring Cancer Drug Responses and Developing of Microfluidic Tumor-on-chip Models

My dissertation, Printable Electrochemical Biosensors for Detection of Neurotransmitters and Other Biological Molecules, was on fabricating an implantable microsensor to reliably measure extracellular glutamate with high spatial and temporal resolution. My research examined glutamate excitotoxicity after spinal cord injury, in which excessive glutamate can cause neuronal damage and degeneration. The microsensor can be rapidly fabricated by direct writing a conductive and flexible nanocomposite ink on a thin-film polymer substrate. The biosensors can detect glutamate release from excised spinal cord segments of a rat following a spinal cord injury and substantiate previous studies documenting a significant increase in extracellular glutamate concentration after the event.

My current postdoctoral research continues to build upon my previous training to help fabricate and characterize microfluidic devices that can be used to address the current questions of preclinical drug testing platforms for cancer research. I am developing a multi-well microfluidic platform that can treat a large array of regularly sized cuboidal-shaped microdissected tissues. My research focuses on developing a flow protocol to perfuse and preserve the native microvasculature of microdissected tissues trapped in our microfluidic platform. Through that, we are looking at the effects of drugs on vascular modulators and determining their response to microvasculature and tumor drug sensitivity. Additionally, I have established an array of real-time aptamer-based electrochemical sensors that integrate directly into the multi-well microfluidic platform. The sensors can detect cytochrome c, a cell death indicator, to continuously monitor the dynamic responses of the tumor and its microenvironment to the pharmaceutical compounds.