Associate Professor Robert Nordon

1. Developing single use-disposables for plant scale production of cells for clinical therapies

The biopharmaceutical sector has relied  on large-volume, batch-fed, stainless-steel fermentation reactors to manufacture biologics at great scale where one batch run equals thousands of products. However, a rapidly evolving biopharmaceutical industry now requires cost-effective technologies to manufacture multiple diverse biologics. This problem is particularly acute for manufacture of personalised cell and gene therapy products where one batch run equals one product. Our research focuses on developing microfluidic devices for cell manufacture, and fabricating these devices as single-use disposables for plant scale production.

2. Modelling human heart and blood development from pluripotent stem cells on a microfluidic chip

We have used lab-on-chip to mimic foetal circulation and to model human blood formation from cells that line blood vessels. We are currently studying the influence of pulsatile fluid shears stress on generation of blood stem cells. We are also investigating the use of hydrogels to pattern embyonic development of the cardiovascular system.

3. Single cell analysis by live cell imaging and RNA seq
We develop software and microfluidic tools for single cell analysis including software to automate cell tracking and to analysis cell fate using single cell RNA seq.