Hemdeep (00:10)
Welcome to Big Ideas in Microscale, the podcast where we explore groundbreaking research happening at the microscale where micro innovations makes a big impact. We're excited to showcase the incredible work being done by our users from around the world who are pushing the boundaries of microfluidics, lab on a chip, organ on a chip and beyond. Through these conversations, we hope to learn from their experiences, uncover their insight and bring their big ideas to a wider audience. So whether in a lab, on the go, or just curious about the future of microtechnology, join us as we dive into big ideas at Microscale.

Hemdeep (01:00)
So thank you very much and welcome back to Big Ideas at Microscale. I'm really keen about introducing the next two people. In 2023, we had this opportunity where we had a chance to connect with the team out of the University of Waterloo led by Veronica Mendes and in that time period we've learned so much and so I think they do some amazing things there. They've also been the ones that validated our new material that just came out, the Cyto-Clear. And I think they've got a story that is really worth sharing. So here we have Veronica and Noah Franco.

My name is Hemdeep Patel. am the co-founder of Creative CAD Works, CAD Works 3D, and Resin works 3D. My co-host is Robin.

Robin (01:51)
Yes, I'm Robin. I'm part of the marketing team. Been with them for three years and I didn't realize it was 2023 when you both started work. Waterloo and Cowers3D started working together. It's been a while.

Hemdeep (02:06)
It has been a while and there have been a number of ups and downs and I think we're going to go through that journey and the journey that Veronica and Noah have had, whether it's the last two years or even before that. So let's quickly introduce and bring on board Veronica Noah. Hi guys. How are you?

Veronika (02:23)
Good, thanks. Good, very good. Thank you, Hemdeep. And it's been great working with you guys. So just to introduce myself quickly, I am a biotechnologist. I studied in Germany. That's where I grew up. And during my undergrad studies, I had the chance to go on exchange. And I came to University of Waterloo to study chemical engineering.

And then as part of that exchange, I had to do a research internship and I had the chance to go to Vancouver to work at UBC in a microphytics lab. And that was my first time working on a micro scale and it absolutely hooked me. I really enjoyed working in microphytics, but also just learning how to fabricate things on a micro scale and push certain applications forward, especially in healthcare. And then.

After this internship, I returned to Germany to finish my degree. And after a few years working in different fields, I did my PhD in micro robotics. So that's when I joined a group in Dresden, Germany, that was one of the few groups worldwide developing these wireless nano or micro scale devices for drug delivery on the micro scale to revolutionize cancer treatment, but also other drug delivery to make it much more targeted and localized.

Then after my PhD, did a postdoc in Dresden as well on sperm biology. After that, went to Barcelona for two years to work at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia. And that's when I first started doing more bio-printing and 3D printing. And then in 2022, I received the position here at the University of Waterloo as assistant professor. So I joined here in fall, 2022.

As a way to start my network here in North America, I was looking for industry collaborations because it's one very good way to fund research, but also just to build that network of industry and research collaborations. At that time, I didn't know any companies in the area. And I was talking to my friend in Barcelona and she said, I think we just bought a printer from a company in your area. And I said, what's that company's name?

She passed me on contact to Creative Card Works and I reached out to Hemdeep and he wrote back right away and that was sort of the start of our connection and that went into a first Mitacs project and now we're on to the second one that's ramping up and it's a bit more extensive. yeah, that's sort of the beginning of the collaboration.

Hemdeep (05:00)
And so now when you were in BC, you said you were working with a team there. What team was it that you working with and what kind of work and research were they doing over there?

Veronika (05:09)
Yeah, that was the Carl Hansen lab at the time. I don't know if you're familiar with them. So what we were trying to do was to run reverse transcription PCR on chip. basically amplifying DNA and having everything on chip from putting the blood cell there all the way to extracting the RNA from those antibody producing cells. Not much worked that time. I was there for those three, four months. I tried to do PCR and

I think it didn't work until like the very last week of it all. So despite being really painful and many, trials, I just loved working in research. That environment was great. It was a young assistant professor at that time, Karl Hansen. And I think later he started a big company that had a big role in antibody production during COVID actually as a major therapy for COVID patients that were really suffering.

I believe he's not a professor at the university anymore, but is moved into industry completely. Oh, wow. But he was just such an amazing supervisor that took me on, not knowing me at all, having this stranger German student coming undergrad and allowing me to work in his lab for the summer. That was really amazing. at that time, we were not doing 3D printing. We were doing photolithography, right? So we had to go to the clean room.

had to do all these multiple steps of having the, what is it called? The photoresist, first making the mask and then the photoresist coating and all these multiple steps to get the chips in the end. So it was painful, but a good experience working in the clean room. But I think now we're, 3D printing has just changed that field so, so much.

Hemdeep (06:38)
The photo resists, I guess.

Noah (06:56)
Yeah, how long would you say it took to like make a trip in the clean room?

Veronika (07:00)
I think it was at least one full, full day, like probably nine hour full day. And then the next day you would do the liftoffs and then put them back together. It was one of those chips where you had multiple layers, because you had had pumps, pump layers that have airflow going through and then other layers that have fluids going through. And they had to be aligned like on a micrometer. So you'd send under the microscope and try to align these different PDMS levels.

But layers. That's crazy. Yeah. So, so we can move beyond that now, I think. ⁓

Hemdeep (07:33)
Yes, we can. And so now the second of our guests is Noah Franco. Noah, you jumped in right there before I even got a chance to introduce you. So here you are. So why don't you give us a quick history about yourself, the stuff that you've been doing up until now.

Noah (07:50)
yeah, of course. Thanks for having me on. So I'm a master's student at the University of Waterloo doing systems engineering at the Magdans lab. And I guess I come from a more non-traditional background coming into engineering because I did my undergrad in Waterloo and I was in the science and business program. So it was kind of a mix of biotechnology and business internships, but I always seemed to like

drift towards the research. so while I was at Waterloo, Jeremiah undergrad, I got to kind of delve into all types of R and D. My first co-op was in Toronto, working on clinical trials of the Canadian made COVID vaccines and testing the first in human trials for like Medi-Cogo and stuff. And that kind of got me interested in med school and research and stuff. And

in the right direction, I went to Ottawa then and that's where I looked at virus-based COVID vaccines and also ⁓ cancer vaccines. So we got to do a bunch of cool work there, got my first publication from that internship and then from there I wanted to go a little bit more into engineering just to like see what it's about and even though I wasn't in an engineering program, I wanted to get the best of both worlds to kind of experience everything in one and

So I worked at a really cool company called Terza Earth. And what they do is they're a bioremediation company. So they're basically pioneering a process to take acidic rock drainage from mining waste and process it to extract any leftover heavy metals, so like a higher yield on the waste, and then also purify that waste. And so I was the like...

genetic engineer there. And so we looked at modifying different types of bacteria to be used in microbial fuel cells for the processing of the waste. And then my last one was a little bit more business based. I did business and R &D for a company called Allora that was in Waterloo's Velocity at the time. From there, when I was finishing my undergrad, I joined Veronica's micro robotics lab and I was super interested in how I could spend my master's.

Being able to use micro robotics to kind of tackle a problem in healthcare has always been really interesting to me. So it was really cool and been getting more and more into 3D printing first through design teams and then through working with Creative CAD works to make these really cool resins.

Robin (10:35)
So you mentioned Veronica's lab, the Mc Dan's lab. When did that actually start up? And you mentioned micro robotics. What are kind of like the other research interests that goes on in the lab?

Noah (10:48)
Yeah, I think Veronica can definitely touch on this for sure. We do have some cool projects.

Veronika (10:52)
Yeah. And then you can also describe sort of the projects you're working on. Yeah. So the, the Magdans lab, like when I look at the website, I've had it for probably six years now. So way before I came to Waterloo, but the, projects have evolved a bit. First, I worked mostly on sperm diagnostics and sperm based micro robots, which might sound a little strange, but

It sort of goes way back to when I did my PhD on sperm-driven micro robots for applications in the reproductive tract. So that's still one of the lines we do, but we've now expanded to also working with synthetic wireless micro robots, or let's say really man-made, fabricated small-scale robots. So one stream is for removal of occlusions in the body. So that could be...

removing blood clots, removing kidney stones. Noah will also talk about another application he's exploring as well as drug delivery or cell delivery, all as therapeutic applications. We have some work also still on sperm diagnostics with new techniques. And then we have one stream that's a bit more on 3D printing, bio-printing, especially to create sophisticated in vitro organ models. So the idea is that we can eventually really print.

a little organ that combines cells as well as a bioscaffold to use that as an in vitro model for drug testing or other microbiotic testing. Those are sort of the main topics we're working on at the moment.

Noah (12:24)
Yeah, so I can jump in and talk about my thesis again. Yeah. There's lots in there, but started my thesis about eight months ago now in September. And what we're working on is developing a non-surgical treatment pathway to treat gallstone disease using micro robotics. And what we want to do is be able to develop robots that can be loaded with drugs and non-surgically guided into

the gallbladder and then be able to dissolve and break down the gallstones. And just a bit of a background on gallstone disease, it's actually quite common. One in three women will be impacted by it at some point in their lives and one in five men will be impacted by it as well. It's more prevalent in women. And the problem with gallstone disease is that you don't know you have it until it's too late. You really only get symptoms from gallstone disease when

these stones become big enough to block your bile duct. And when it does become too late, the only solution doctors really have and that they've reverted to for the past 30 years is to cut, surgically remove the gallbladder. And that's called a cholecystectomy. It's one of the most common surgeries done in North America.

Robin (13:46)
actually I have a friend who had it last year,

Noah (13:49)
Yeah.

Hemdeep (13:49)
It's so funny when you said that because my mom had it a few years back and I kid you not for nearly I think four months she would just go, I think I've got this ache in my stomach for four solid months. And when she finally went under the doctor came out and said, your mom is made out of a ton of bricks. She should have been withering in pain. had gotten so atrophied.

And then when that happened, find a lot of people have had that happen where, and then the onset of pain is almost immediate at that point and excruciating.

Robin (14:23)
wish these microbots were already done because I had a friend, she also had it just last year and this was around the time that she was giving birth as well. I can't imagine the pain that she must have been going through.

Veronika (14:33)
⁓ wow.

Noah (14:40)
yeah from the people I've talked to the consensus is that people always want like another option because there are like consequences to having it removed i mean like you have to change your diet as well like kemdi did you notice that any like lifestyle and diet changes happened

Hemdeep (14:57)
is still just going by her. It has not changed a bit. I'm sure her rules, her life, and I don't believe, I didn't even know. I'm sure that the doctor probably gave her a list of things to do and not do. And I think it sort of got tossed ⁓ as soon as she stepped out of the hospital. I don't think she had a concern in the world. She was like, okay, great. I can start traveling again. That's all she really is, her big passion in life.

I had one question and the one question is that for both of you, in fact, it seems like you went through all of these points in your life of joining different teams, whether, you know, new labs, new projects, and that requires a lot of learning because it's a brand new topic that you're learning. How much of that was the ability to absorb new topics or was there a unique precursor that you had that allowed you to go from topic to topic to topic?

ever changing and yet be able to sort pull old experiences to a new topic and still sort of get on with it and really ⁓ sort of jump ahead and take the topic, whatever new subject we had for.

Noah (16:09)
Yeah, from my perspective going into all these different co-ops, I don't think I had something special other than just like a passion and a will to want to learn new things and that drives you to learn more than you thought you came for. That's what I tried to do during each of my internships was just pick something that I wasn't comfortable with, pick something

that I wanted to learn rather than something I already had the skill set for to kind of make myself uncomfortable and to be able to learn new things. How about you, Veronica?

Veronika (16:46)
Yeah, I mean, we, we constantly learn new things and that's what I love about research. For example, we, I didn't know anything about gallstone disease going into this topic and basically was throwing it at Noah and said, do you want to look into that and see if that makes sense? I think what I would hate the most having a job where I would have to do the same thing over and over again, or even having to do the same thing today that I did yesterday.

So every day is completely new, trying out new things, learning, it's constant learning. It's really satisfying, right? It's really, really great being able to explore.

Hemdeep (17:24)
There's never a day where we're doing the same thing. In fact, it's always something new and crazy happening at the office. Don't you agree, Robin? Yeah.

Robin (17:33)
Fair true, it's definitely something I noticed over the last couple of years working with the company, which is great. The work we do is never the same and there's always a new idea or benchmark that we're trying to push. But as much as I would love to continue this conversation, we're gonna have to wrap up today's episode of Big Ideas at Microscale.

Hemdeep (17:50)
Big thanks to Veronica Magdez and Noah Franco for sharing their amazing work and stories with us. We talked about their path into micro robotics, their research on non-surgical gallstone treatment, sperm-based robots, bio-printed organ models, and how a strong sense of curiosity and a love of learning is at the heart of everything they do.

Robin (18:13)
If you liked today's episode, come back next week. Veronica and Noah will be back to talk about the Cytoclear photopolymer resin, our new cell-viable 3D printing material that they have been testing for our team. You won't want to miss how this new material could be a real game changer for medical research. Thanks for tuning in to Big Ideas of Microscale. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to follow us and stay up to date. You can listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or watch the full video on YouTube.

You can also follow us for more updates and behind the scenes content on LinkedIn, Instagram, Blue Sky, and X. We're Cat Works 3D across the board. That's spelled C-A-D-W-O-R-K-S 3D. For show notes, paper references, and bonus resources on today's topic, visit our website, catworks3d.com. That's spelled C-A-D-W-O-R-K-S 3D.com.

Hemdeep (19:09)
Thank you for tuning in and as always stay curious, keep exploring and never stop asking the big questions that are shaping our world. Whether you're in the lab or on the go, we're just curious about the future of technology. Come join us as we continue to dive into big ideas and microscale.