NU Microfluidics Group

Welcome to Kulsharova's Group at Nazarbayev University

What is Microfluidics?

Microfluidic chips are a set of microchannels etched or molded into material (silicon, polymer, glass).

Applications:

- Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)

- Biomedical (lab-on-a-chip devices –diagnostics/kits/assays on-a-chip) and organ-on-a-chip devices

- Pharma and Biotechnology applications

What is organ-on-chip technology?

Microengineered platforms that allow to grow the cell culture using microfluidics in order to to mimick microphysiological systems of different organs, including liver, lung, kidney and others.

Our current research is aimed on developing organ-on-chip platform that would allow maintaining the cell culture within the device to conduct range of experiments such as testing metabolic activity, drug toxicity screening

Research projects

Our group was formed in 2021. We focus on development of devices with microchannels (microfluidic chips) that can be used for growing human cells and testing pharmaceutical drug compounds in laboratory conditions. Currently, we are working on two main directions: on a “lung-on-chip” device that in the future can potentially be used to access toxic nanoparticle effect on human respiratory system, and on a “liver-on-chip” device that will be used to evaluate the reaction of human liver cells on drugs that people frequently use such as paracetamol and others. Projects are very interdisciplinary and require expertise from various areas such as 1) microfabrication 2) biomaterial science 3) biology 4) sensors, and 5) computational fluid dynamics (CFD)