Date Posted
Speaker
Shih-Ting "Christine" Wang, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Material Science and Engineering, Northwestern University
Biography
Dr. Christine Wang is a biomaterials engineer specializing in bioactive materials for medical applications. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Koch Institute of MIT, she developed multiplexed nanosensors for non-invasive detection of lung cancer through exhaled breath. In January 2025, she began her independent research program as an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, continuing to integrate engineering and medicine to tackle critical health challenges.
Previously, Dr. Wang was a research associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where she designed novel 3D protein architectures using DNA nanotechnology. She earned her Ph.D. from Imperial College London, focusing on biosensing technologies and understanding amyloid fibrillation in diabetes. Additionally, she collaborated with the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on peptidomimetics and liquid-cell electron microscopy to visualize bio-nano interactions in situ to deepen understanding of materials dynamics relevant to medical applications.
Abstract
Breath biopsy is emerging as a rapid and non-invasive diagnostic tool that links exhaled chemical signatures with specific medical conditions. Despite its potential, clinical translation remains limited by the challenge of reliably detecting endogenous, disease-specific biomarkers in breath. Synthetic biomarkers present an emerging paradigm for precision diagnostics by amplifying biochemical signals in the diseased microenvironments. However, their adaptation to breath biopsy has been constrained by the limited availability of volatile reporters that are detectable and distinguishable in exhaled breath. In this talk, I will describe how we address this limitation by engineering multiplexed breath biomarkers that couple aberrant protease activities to exogenous volatile reporters. We designed novel intramolecular reactions to sense a broad spectrum of proteases, each releasing a unique reporter in breath. This approach was validated in a mouse model of influenza to establish baseline sensitivity and specificity in a controlled inflammatory setting and subsequently applied to diagnose lung cancer using an autochthonous Alk-mutant model. We show that combining multiplexed reporter signals with machine learning algorithms enables assessment of tumor progression, treatment response, and relapse within 30 min. This multiplexed breath biopsy platform highlights a promising avenue for rapid, point-of-care diagnostics across diverse disease states. Beyond this work, I will also describe new directions of developments of diagnostic platforms for improving the quality of human health.