People

Research Interests

New instrumentation and methods for cell-based assays, deep-UV microscopy, microfluidics for assay of DNA, RNA and protein.

Current Research

The emerging view is that cancer shares an analogy to contagious disease. Under healthy systemic control, or with the intervention of drugs, an evolving balance is developed between healthy and potentially malignant rare progenitor cell types. Therefore, “base-line” genomic data is insufficient, and averaged genomic data or averaged expression patterns are very indirect and blunt as a diagnostic.

Our laboratory is developing the new methods and instruments needed to gather sufficiently detailed molecular snapshots from sufficiently specific rare-cell phenotypes for both drug development and clinical diagnosis. To some large part, the technology that can fill the gap can be assembled from high-speed microscopy and microfluidics, however, the instruments and work flow need to be redesigned, and other elements such as efficient cost-effective quantitative expression analysis need to be re-thought in format.

Selected Recent Publications

Ueberfeld J, McKenna B, Rubin-Berjerano I, Verstrepen, K, and Ehrlich DJ “Reaction-Mapped Quantitative Multiplexed PCR on a Microfluidic Device” Analytical Chemistry 80: 7430-7436 (2008)

Zeskind BJ, Jordan CD, Timp W, Trapani L, Waller G, Horodincu V, Ehrlich DJ, and Matusudaira P “Nucleic Acid and Protein Mass Mapping by Live-Cell Deep-Ultraviolet Microscopy” Nature Methods 4(7): 567-569 (2007)

Mckenna BK, Salim H, Bringhurst FR and Ehrlich DJ “Parallel Microfluidic Cytometer  for Rare-Cell Screening” Lab On a Chip (In Press, 2008)

Ueberfeld J, El-Difrawy SA, Ramandie K, and Ehrlich DJ “Solid-Support Sample Loading for DNA Sequencing” Anal. Chem. 78: 3632-3627 (2006)

 

Goedecke N, McKenna B, El-Difrway S, Gismondi E, Swenson A, Carey L, Matsudaira P, and Ehrlich DJ “Microdevice DNA Forensics by the Simple Tandem Repeat Method” J Chroma A. 1111: 206-213 (2006)

Aborn JH, El-Difrawy SA, Novotny M, Gismondi EA, Lam R, Matsudaira P, McKenna BK,  O’Neil T, Streechon P and Ehrlich DJ  “A 768-lane Microfabricated System for High-Throughput DNA Sequencing”  Lab on a Chip 6: 669-674 (2005)

El-Difrawy SA, Lam R, Aborn JH, Novotny M, Gismondi EA, Matsudaira P, McKenna BK,  O’Neil T, Streechon P and Ehrlich DJ “High Throughput System for DNA Sequencing” Rev Sci Instrum. 76 (7): 074301 (2005)

Callewaert N, Contreras R, Mitnik-Gankin L, Carey L, Matsudaira P and Ehrlich DJ  “Total Serum Protein N-glycome Profiling on a Capillary Electrophoresis-Microfluidics  Platform” Electrophoresis 25 (18-19): 3128-3131 (2004)