Lecture: "Nanoformulations for Cytokine Sensing in Neuroscience: From Nanosensors to In Vivo Device Development"

Cytokines secreted from cells play critical roles in tissue repair, cancer development and progression. Unfortunately, probing what cells "see", and what they secrete as they respond in real time to the surrounding signals is still a major challenge. The ultra-low concentration of cytokine (in the pM range), and extremely dynamic, transient cytokine secretion process make cytokine quantification even difficult. By integrating with nanotechnology, biosensors as the analytical devices for the detection of an analyte, that combines a biological component with a physicochemical detector, have demonstrated huge potential for cytokine sensing.

Liu, an ARC Future Fellow & Senior Lecturer at The University of New South Wales (UNSW), is leading a research team working on Integrated Devices and Intelligent Diagnostics (ID2). After finishing her PhD degree in Chemistry in 2006 under the supervision of Prof Justin Gooding at UNSW, Dr Liu has conducted her postdoctoral research at CSIRO (2006-2008) and UNSW (2008-2010), respectively before she accepted a faculty position as Associate Professor at the Central China Normal University, China (2010-2015). In 2015 Dr Liu moved back to Sydney and worked as Research Fellow at ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhtotnics (CNBP), Macquarie University before she was awarded the prestigious ARC Future Fellowship in 2016.

Hosted by Dr. Tony Jun Huang