Sofia Johansson
Researcher at Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Biomedical Engineering
- E-mail:
- sofia.m.johansson@angstrom.uu.se
- Visiting address:
- Ångströmlaboratoriet, Lägerhyddsvägen 1
- Postal address:
- Box 35
751 03 UPPSALA
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Short presentation
Sofia joined the EMBLA research group in 2017. She is now a senior researcher with research focusing on enabling electrical sensing in microfluidic devices for life science applications, mainly for organs-on-chip applications and for microfluidic antibiotics suceptibility testing.
Sofia is course responsible for undergraduate course MEMS for applications in life science (1TM132) and the PhD course Writing and Reviewing in Biomedical Engineering.
Keywords
- antimicrobial resistance
- data driven life science
- integrated electronics and sensors
- micro- and nanofabrication
- microfluidics and droplet microfluidics
- precision medicine
Biography
- 2022 - current, Senior researcher in EMBLA group, Uppsala University
- 2017 - 2022, Researcher/Post-doc in EMBLA group, Uppsala University
- 2015 - 2017, PostDoc at Centre for Hybrid Biodevice, University of Southampton (UK)
- 2014, PhD in Electrical Engineering, Lund University
- 2008, MSc in Engineering Nanoscience, Lund University
Research
Project 1: Microfluidic antibiotic susceptibility testing using electrical read-out
Antimicrobial resistance is one of our greatest global challenges, predicted to cause 10 million deaths annually by 2050. One challenge in the fight against antibiotic resistance is fast and reliable diagnostic tools so that antibiotics are used only when necessary and useful. The goal of the project is to develop an on-site diagnostic tool that can be used in dairy farms to determine antibiotic susceptibility (AST) and to identify the bacterial species. The technology is based on microfluidics with electrical read-out to enable a truly portable device that can be used by a non-expert directly on milk samples. By capturing and monitoring the growth rate of bacteria in microfluidic channels, the detection time for antibiotic resistance can be significantly reduced compared to current practices. We hypothesize that simultaneous AST and species identification would be made possible through careful analysis of the curve shape in the impedance spectra and could be used to distinguish cell properties such as size and cell wall composition (e.g. Gram positive/negative), which is important both for the selection of antibiotics and the prevention of disease.
Project 2: Trans-epithelial electrical resistance (TEER) in Organs-on-Chip
Organs-on-chip are developed to improve current in vitro models to better recapitulate human physiology. With improved models comes the possibility to reduce animal testing according to the 3R (replacement, refinement, reduction) principle. In addition to improving the cell culture conditions, microfabricated organs-on-chip devices lend themselves well to integrated sensing with the potential to acquire detailed and time-resolved information on important biological processes. We work, in particular, with trans-epithelial electrical resistance (TEER) to monitor the integrity of biological barriers, such as the intestine epithelium. Our systems deliver information rich TEER data where impedance spectra are measured every 15 min over 10+ days’ time periods at multiple locations along the microfluidic culture chamber, as well as in combination with optical in situ monitoring.
Publications
Recent publications
- Integration of multiple flexible electrodes for real-time detection of barrier formation with spatial resolution in a gut-on-chip system (2024)
- Exploring the dependence of hydrogel sample thickness on resulting apparent Young's modulus (2024)
- Flexible electrodes on polyimide tape for OoC applications (2024)
- Two-Photon Polymerization Printing with High Metal Nanoparticle Loading (2023)
- Photophysiological response of Symbiodiniaceae single cells to temperature stress (2022)
All publications
Articles
- Integration of multiple flexible electrodes for real-time detection of barrier formation with spatial resolution in a gut-on-chip system (2024)
- Two-Photon Polymerization Printing with High Metal Nanoparticle Loading (2023)
- Photophysiological response of Symbiodiniaceae single cells to temperature stress (2022)
- A microscopy-compatible temperature regulation system for single-cell phenotype analysis - demonstrated by thermoresponse mapping of microalgae (2021)
- In-Line Analysis of Organ-on-Chip Systems with Sensors (2021)
- Organ-on-a-chip technology (2021)
- A practical guide to microfabrication and patterning of hydrogels for biomimetic cell culture scaffolds (2020)
Conferences
- Exploring the dependence of hydrogel sample thickness on resulting apparent Young's modulus (2024)
- Flexible electrodes on polyimide tape for OoC applications (2024)
- In-line analysis of organ-on-chip systems with sensors – an overview (2021)
- Mapping the thermoresponses of micralgae by integrating single-cell arrays on a programmable temperature stage (2021)
- Emulating the gut-liver axis (2021)
- Fabrication of electrodes on flexible substrates for OoC integration (2021)
- Combined effects of thermal stress and UV filter exposure on single cells of Symbiodinium (2021)
- Increasing the physiological relevance of the gut-on-chip model (2020)
- 2D and 3D patterning of biological hydrogels for organ-on-chip applications (2018)
- Organs-on-Chip System with Integrated Transparent Conductive Oxide Electrodes (2018)
- Integrated transparent electrodes in an organs-on-chip system (2018)
