A new spin on an old dish
When Hamid Sadabadi, PhD 13, and Neil Roy Choudhury, BEng 13, founded Calgary-based Frontier Fluidics in 2017, their aim was to create faster and cheaper ways for researchers to perform biomedical testing using microfluidic technology.
A year later, the two Concordia graduates are busy developing what they call a “next-generation petri dish.”
Neil Roy Choudhury and Hamid Sadabadi co-founded Frontier Fluidics in 2017. The Calgary-based company focuses on microfluidics chip design and manufacturing.
“At the moment, if a scientist wants to do a very simple drug discovery test on cancer cells, he puts a drop containing cancer cells on a petri dish and adds reagents to it,” says Sadabadi, chief technology officer at Frontier Fluidics.
“A small sample contains millions of cancer cells, so it may not be easy to study them properly because there are so many. Using microfluidics, we can isolate and immobilize individual cancer cells.”
Microfluidics is a technology that uses small bits of fluidic systems to handle and manipulate flow at the micro level. The field emerged out of the 1980s and its findings have been used for a variety of applications, such as biosensing and replica molding.
Despite this, many researchers in the scientific community are still unaware of the relatively new technology.
“Since the ’90s, there have only been a few professors or researchers who have this kind of knowledge,” explains Choudhury, Frontier Fluidics’ chief executive officer.
“Microfluidics has stayed within mechanical and biomedical engineering, but it’s the biologists and pharmacists who do medical research. What Frontier Fluidics is trying to do is bridge that gap.”
Microfluidics and Concordia
While Choudhury did not work with microfluidics during his time as an undergraduate at Concordia’s Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, he was exposed to the technology while working under Ali Dolatabadi, professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering.
Choudhury also credits the university for offering him teaching and research opportunities that he thinks he wouldn’t have had access to at other North American universities.
“If it wasn’t for Concordia and the opportunities that were given to me, Frontier Fluidics would not exist,” he says. “It’s as simple as that — we would not exist.”
Sadabadi had some experience with bio-applications and microfluidics before arriving at Concordia in 2009. When Muthukumaran Packirisamy accepted to be his PhD supervisor, the professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering got Sadabadi to work on a project to create a sensor for milk analysis.
The project’s results were publishd in six journals, including Nature Scientific Reports.
“I designed a sensor that was able to measure the growth hormones that are injected into cattle to increase their milk supply,” Sadabadi reports. “It was a very interesting project and I became very involved in microfluidics through that.”
Single-purpose chip
Both Sadabadi and Choudhury are pleased with the amount of excitement their startup has generated and are currently working on securing a number of grants. Nevertheless, the engineering entrepreneurs still have much they want to achieve in the months and years to come.
“The ultimate goal for Frontier Fluidics is to get some traction with the professors and research institutes to eventually design a generic chip that has a single purpose,” says Sadabadi. “But before we can get to that point, we need to get the community to accept microfluidics as a detection method.”
Choudhury, who is currently pursuing his MBA at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, believes the conversations he and Sadabadi have with researchers and professors will determine what market they intend to penetrate.
“A year from now, I would like to be completing the design and at least halfway through the testing of our new chip,” he says.
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