ME Associate Professor Jianping Fu’s research has been selected for the frontispiece story for the 2016 Aug. 12 issue of Small and the inside front cover story for the 2016 Sept. 7 issue of Small. Fu is also an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and of Cell and Developmental Biology, as well as the Associate Director of the Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care.
Blood coagulation is a critical hemostatic process that must be properly regulated to maintain a delicate balance between bleeding and clotting. Disorders of blood coagulation can expose patients to the risk of either bleeding disorders or thrombotic diseases. Dr. Fu and his students have leveraged recent advancements in device miniaturization using functional soft materials to develop a miniaturized clot retraction force assay device termed mHemoRetractoMeter (mHRM). The mHRM is capable of precise measurements of dynamic clot retraction forces in real time using minute amounts of whole blood. The mHRM’s low fabrication cost, small size, and consumption of only minute amounts of blood samples make the technology promising as a point-of-care tool for future coagulation monitoring.
Rapid fluid transport and exchange are critical operations involved in many microfluidic applications. In this work, Dr. Fu and his students have developed a technology termed Vacuum-Pressure Accelerated Movement (V-PAM) capable of significantly enhancing biofluid transport in complex microfluidic environments containing dead-end channels and closed chambers. The V-PAM technology provides a promising generic microfluidic tool for advanced fluid control and transport in integrated microfluidics for different microfluidic diagnosis, organs-on-chips, and biomimetic studies.
