Columbia Engineering, Medical Researchers Join to Find New Ways to Detect Birth Defects

A team of physicians and engineers at Columbia University is developing bioengineering methods of providing safer and more cost-effective prenatal diagnosis for pregnant women.

With a three-year grant of $706,000 from the Whitaker Foundation, members of the research team, from both the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) and the College of Physicians & Surgeons (P&S), are working together across traditional disciplinary boundaries to learn how to recover fetal cells from the blood of expectant mothers.

If successful, such a method would eliminate the need for amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling, two costly and somewhat risky procedures that are now used to determine the health and gender of developing fetuses.

Fetal cells are extremely rare in maternal blood, occurring at a rate of only one in 70,000 cells. Each member of the team brings unique skills to the effort to solve the problem of isolating enough of these cells to permit diagnosis of potential birth defects.

Edward Leonard, professor of chemical engineering, directs the project. He heads the engineering school's Artificial Organs Research Laboratory. The fetal cell work will complement other research under way in his laboratory that seeks to understand the attachment of cells to surfaces, both as a phenomenon that occurs in living systems and as a tool in biotechnology. The surfaces on which fetal cells would be selectively captured will be coated with known antibodies that have a special immunochemical affinity for fetal cells.

René Chevray, professor of mechanical engineering and the co-principal investigator on the project, will apply a recently developed mixing technique, called chaotic advection, to the problem. Chaotic advection will allow the researchers to very gently mix the blood sample containing fetal cells so that the capturing surfaces have a mathematical certainty of contacting each fetal cell. "This is a rare instance in which a new, novel technique from the field of fluid mechanics finds direct application," Professor Chevray said.

Dr. Dorothy Warburton, an internationally recognized cytogeneticist at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, will help the team recognize and analyze the chromosomes of fetal cells. Dr. Daniel Lasser, a maternal and fetal medicine specialist at P&S, brings expertise on fetal blood to the team and will also arrange for actual tests on blood samples from pregnant women once the laboratory aspects of the technique are developed.

The Whitaker Foundation, which awarded the grant in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, wants the research team to demonstrate the potential cost-effectiveness of the procedure as results become available. Team member Ruby Grewal from the International Center for Health Outcomes and Innovation Research of the Department of Surgery at P&S will contribute her expertise to that end.

"We have put together an unusually broad collection of talent to address this research issue," Professor Leonard said. "It is especially important to recognize the teamwork across disciplinary lines that will be taking place here," he continued. In keeping with a goal articulated by Columbia President George Rupp, he said, the project will increase teamwork among members of different disciplines, improving collaboration between the medical center and the Morningside campus.

"We hope to combine the unique perspectives of engineering and medicine to develop a safe and effective method of prenatal diagnosis that respects today's economic realities," he said.

The Whitaker Foundation was established by Uncas A. Whitaker, who was founder and president of AMP Corp. At his death, he left the bulk of his estate to the foundation for the purposes of fostering biomedical engineering research and establishing the academic discipline of biomedical engineering.

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