| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 動力機械工程學系 === 102 === Because people lifestyle changed, cancer has been the top ten causes of death for 13 years. In every 100 people, 28 people were dead because of cancer. Cancer is caused by either the congenital mutations or the overexpression of oncogenes. It has a powerful ability to transform proliferative and transfer. Because the activation of oncogenes mutations takes months, the diagnosis need a long time. Therefore, the cancer was considered a terminal illness. However, with the medical improvement, the surgery and chemotherapy have been used to cure malignant tumors. Although surgery is easy to remove the tumor directly, this method can only postpone the disease if the cancer has moved to other organs. The chemotherapy can effective cure the cancer, but the patients might usually suffer from the significant side effects. However, both of these methods are unable to effectively cure the cancer. There are many kinds of therapies proposed in recent years, such as gene therapy, inhibition of angiogenesis, inhibition of pro-cancer protein and immunotherapy.
Immunotherapy has the potential among a variety of treatments. Cancer immunotherapy is a popular medical technology. On April 29, 2010, the FDA approved cancer treatment vaccine which was called Provenge. Provenge is used for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. It represents the customization of new medical era. It can be used to make different vaccines according to different types of cancer. Among all strategies, cancer immunotherapy of dendritic cells / tumor fusion vaccine is a therapeutic option. Dendritic cells are phagocytes and have the strongest antigen expression. When dendritic cells swallow the antigen, they will activate the adaptive immune system. Therefore, the fusion of dendritic cells / tumor can make dendritic cells divide faster and mass-produce the vaccine.
In tradition, either polyethylenglycol or randomness method was used for electric fusion. The efficiency and the quality of the vaccine were both unstable. Through this research we develop a cell electrofusion lab chip which combined the rapid and precise cell pairing micro-structures and the high yield electrofusion micro-electrodes to improve the cell fusion techniques and overcome the key barriers. We wish to build and develop an automated, mass-produced and efficient dendritic cell / tumor fusion vaccine.
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