Engineering’s Umut Gurkan receives two grant awards, totaling over $1.2M, to advance sickle cell research
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award number STTR R42HL182546. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Umut Gurkan, the Wilbert J. Austin Professor of Engineering at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, recently received two grant awards, totaling over $1.2M, to advance sickle cell research.
As a principle investigator, Gurkan studies manufacturing and analytical validation of the microfluidic impedance red cell assay for commercial viability—a microfluidic biochip that quantifies red blood cell deformability via electrical impedance.
As a collaboration with BioChip Labs Inc and Pedram Mohseni, PhD—chair of the Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering—this study provides an objective, quantitative in vitro diagnostic to assess RBC health and therapeutic response in sickle cell disease.
Co-investigator and principal investigator of the $500,000 CWRU subaward, Gurkan also studies hypoxemia with sleep in sickle cell anemia, a four-site prospective study examining the prevalence, clinical and cellular impact, and treatment response of sleep-associated hypoxemia in adults with sickle cell anemia.
Together, these awards reflect strongly translational, engineering-driven collaborations spanning Case School of Engineering, the CWRU School of Dental Medicine and School of Medicine, industry partners and peer institutions.
