35 - "Outsmarting cancer with liquid biopsy"
Host:
Aline Cerf
President, co-founder
SmartCatch
Abstract:
Liquid biopsy has been recognized as a promising tool in the fight against cancer. The active monitoring of cancer-associated biomarkers found in blood such as circulating tumor cells (CTC), may greatly advance the understanding of the disease and, thereby, improve the clinical outcome of cancer patients. At SmartCatch, we are developing state-of-the-art technologies to make liquid biopsy accessible and an essential medical procedure for the diagnosis, follow-up and personalization of care in medical oncology. Extracting these cancer-associated biomarkers from whole blood is challenging given their rareness and the complexity and rheological properties of the fluid. SmartCatch associates advanced computational fluid dynamics in the development of its innovative solutions to lift these bottlenecks.
Short Bio:
Aline Cerf is a physicist by training. She obtained a PhD in nanophysics in 2010 at the University of Toulouse. She completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at Cornell University in the United States. In 2012, she joined the CNRS in France as a full-time researcher at the Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS-CNRS) to work on the development of new microtechnology-based tools and methods in life sciences and health-related applications. In 2016, she created SmartCatch, a spin-off of the CNRS, together with three other associates, and has been acting as CEO of the company since 2019.
