Minseok S Kim

Samsung | samsung · Well Aging Research Center

Components in neural implants, such as the electrode array and stimulator circuit, are often fabricated discretely. This modular fabrication scheme offers flexibility during development but poses difficulties during assembly, as components must be compactly integrated for implantation. It is particularly difficult in cases where the electrode array...

Background: Traditional immuno-oncology strategies, such as checkpoint blockade therapy, are evolving to immune cell engagers as a smarter strategy. The early successes of Blincyto, a CD3 engager, demonstrated its capacity to activate host pan-T cells irrespective of their TCR-pMHC restriction status. However, this broad activation has been linked...

Non-biodegradable implants have undergone extensive investigation as drug delivery devices to enable advanced healthcare toward personalized medicine. However, fibroblast encapsulation is one of the major challenges in all non-biodegradable implants, besides other challenges such as high initial burst, risk of membrane rupture, high onset time, non...

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ coactivator-1α (PGC-1α) is a master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis. Reduced PGC-1α abundance is linked to skeletal muscle weakness in aging or pathological conditions, such as neurodegenerative diseases and diabetes; thus, elevating PGC-1α abundance might be a promising strategy to treat muscle ag...

Background: This study aimed to identify the specific T cell co-stimulatory and co-inhibitory factors that play prognostic roles in patients with glioblastoma. Additionally, the unique histone H3 modification enzymes that regulate the expression levels of these specific co-stimulatory and co-inhibitory factors were investigated. Methods: The med...

While the world is rapidly transforming into a superaging society, pharmaceutical approaches to treat sarcopenia have hitherto not been successful due to their insufficient efficacy and failure to specifically target skeletal muscle cells (skMCs). Although electrical stimulation (ES) is emerging as an alternative intervention, its efficacy toward t...

Natural killer (NK) cells are a part of the innate immune system, providing the first line of defense against cancer cells and pathogens at an early stage. Hence, they are attracting attention as a valuable resource for allogeneic cell immunotherapy. However, NK cells exist with limited proportion in blood, and obtaining sufficient clinical-grade N...

Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease subtype 1A (CMT1A) is one of the most prevalent demyelinating peripheral neuropathies worldwide, caused by duplication of the peripheral myelin protein 22 (PMP22) gene, which is expressed primarily in Schwann cells (SCs). PMP22 overexpression in SCs leads to intracellular aggregation of the protein, which eventually resu...

Natural killer (NK) cells are an attractive cell source in cancer immunotherapy due to their potent antitumor ability and promising safety for allogenic applications. However, the clinical outcome of NK cell therapy has been limited due to poor persistence and loss of activity in the cytokine-deficient tumor microenvironment. Benefits from exogenou...

Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth Disease Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth (CMT) disease – the most prevalent inherited peripheral neuropathy worldwide – currently lacks an approved treatment, as the biochemical interventions attempted have remained unsuccessful. In article number 2201358, Minseok S. Kim and co‐workers introduce a paradigm‐shifting biophysical treatment for...

Progress in neurological research has experienced bottlenecks owing to the limited availability of purified primary neurons. Since neuronal cells are non-proliferative, it is necessary to obtain purified neurons from animal models or human patients for experimental work. However, currently available methods for purifying primary neurons are time-co...

A co-culture of neurons and Schwann cells has frequently been used to investigate myelin sheath formation. However, this approach is restricted to myelin-related diseases of the peripheral nervous system. This study introduces and compares an ex vivo model of adult-mouse-derived dorsal root ganglia (DRG) explant, with an in vitro co-culture of diss...

Understanding cancer heterogeneity is essential to finding diverse genetic mutations in metastatic cancers. Thus, it is critical to isolate all types of CTCs to identify accurate cancer information from patients. Moreover, full automation robustly capturing the full spectrum of CTCs is an urgent need for CTC diagnosis to be routine clinical practic...

As the myelin sheath is crucial for neuronal saltatory conduction, loss of myelin in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) leads to demyelinating neuropathies causing muscular atrophy, numbness, foot deformities and paralysis. Unfortunately, few interventions are available for such neuropathies, because previous pharmaceuticals have shown severe side...

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the methylation status of major histone modification sites in primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) samples and examine their prognostic roles in patients with PCNSL. Materials and method: Between 2007 and 2020, 87 patients were histopathologically diagnosed with PCNSL. We performed immunohistoc...

Purpose: The objective of this study was to investigate the epigenetic role of histone lysine methylation/demethylation on the expression of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) associated transcriptional factors (TFs) during the metastasis of lung adenocarcinoma to the brain. Methods: Paired samples of lung adenocarcinoma and brain metast...

Background: Muscle wasting, resulting from aging or pathological conditions, leads to reduced quality of life, increased morbidity, and increased mortality. Much research effort has been focused on the development of exercise mimetics to prevent muscle atrophy and weakness. In this study, we identified indoprofen from a screen for peroxisome proli...

Microchips are widely used to separate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from whole blood by virtues of sophisticated manipulation for microparticles. Here, we present a chip with an 8 μm high and 27.9 mm wide slit to capture cancer cells bound to 3 μm beads. Apart from a higher purity and recovery rate, the slit design allows for simplified fabricati...

Pipetting techniques play a crucial role in obtaining reproducible and reliable results, especially when seeding cells on small target areas, such as on microarrays, biochips or microfabricated cell culture systems. For very rare cells, such as human primary skeletal muscle cells (skMCs), manual (freehand) cell seeding techniques invariably result...

Adiponectin (Ad) is a representative adipocytokine that regulates energy homeostasis including glucose transport and lipid oxidation through activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) pathways. Plasma levels of Ad are reduced in obesity, which contributes to type 2 diabetes. Therefore, agents that activate the Ad signaling pathway could amel...

In order to precisely purify and study aged (senescent) cells, we have designed, fabricated, and demonstrated a novel diamond-structure (DS) microfluidic filter. Non-uniform flow velocities within the microfilter channel can compromise microfluidic filter performance but with this new diamond structure, further optimized via simulation, we achieve...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the primary cause of dementia, and its root cause remains uncertain with no effective cure. Pathological inspection typically characterizes AD as amyloid beta (Aβ42) plaques buildup, tau protein hyperphosphorylation, and neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) in the gray matter of the brain. As a result, AD has primarily been con...

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are rare cells and the presence of these cells may indicate a poor prognosis and a high potential for metastasis. Despite highly promising clinical applications, CTCs have not been investigated thoroughly, due to many technical limitations faced in their isolation and identification. Current CTC detection techniques m...

Full automation with high purity for circulating tumor cell (CTC) isolation has been regarded as a key goal to make CTC analysis a "bench to bedside" technology. Here, we have developed a novel centrifugal microfluidic platform that can isolate the rare cells from a large volume of whole blood. To isolate CTCs from whole blood, we introduce a disc...

Conventional molecular profiling methods using immunochemical assays have limits in terms of multiplexity and the quantification of biomarkers in investigation of cancer cells. In this paper, we demonstrate a quantum dot (QD)-based microfluidic multiple biomarker quantification (QD-MMBQ) method that enables labeling of more than eight proteins immu...

Since circulating tumor cell(CTC) studies have shown many clinical implication, technologies enabling detection and analysis of the CTC have been briskly demonstrated. Here, we present a novel fully automated centrifugal microfluidic platform to isolate CTCs, capable of high efficient density based separation and dealing with large volume. Over 90%...

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), though exceedingly rare in the blood, are nonetheless becoming increasingly important in cancer diagnostics. Despite this keen interest and the growing number of potential clinical applications, there has been limited success in developing a CTC isolation platform that simultaneously optimizes recovery rates, purity,...

Analysis of cancer cells: A new technique isolates rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and analyzes their protein expression by the use of detachable beads and high-pore-density filters. This technique shows significantly improved efficiency in the isolation of rare CTCs from peripheral blood and enables accurate measurement of in situ protein-expr...

A hydrodynamic filter includes a first portion, and a second portion which is spaced apart from and faces the first portion. The first portion includes a plurality of protrusions protruding in a first direction, and the second portion includes a plurality of protrusions protruding in a second direction opposite to the first direction. A filtering a...

A quantitative, reproducible, fast and inexpensive multiplexed immunohistochemistry (IHC) system might play a locomotive role in drug screening and personalized medicine. Currently, fully automated IHC machines and sequential multiplexed IHC methods based upon multiple color reagents have been developed, with the evolution of such methods having re...

This paper describes a novel microchip filter device incorporating slit arrays and 3-dimensional flow that can separate rare cells with high efficiency and throughput. The proposed device has several tens of times increased throughput, and has a unique pressure distribution along the filter pore, inducing target cells to be captured and gently line...

This paper describes a novel microchip filter device incorporating slit arrays and 3-dimensional flow that can separate rare cells with high efficiency and throughput. The proposed device has several tens of times increased throughput, and has a unique pressure distribution along the filter pore, inducing target cells to be captured and gently line...

We present a novel method for separating circulating tumor cells (CTCs) with high recovery and purity at the same time using a micro-slit filter chip and a fully automated fluidic system. Considering white blood cells (WBCs) as big as CTCs are also captured with CTCs during filtration, we amplified the size of CTCs specifically using microbeads (3...

Isolation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) by size exclusion can yield poor purity and low recovery rates, due to large variations in size of CTCs, which may overlap with leukocytes and render size-based filtration methods unreliable. This report presents a very sensitive, selective, fast, and novel method for isolation and detection of CTCs. Our...

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have gained increasing attention as physicians and scientists learn more about the role these extraordinarily rare cells play in metastatic cancer. In developing CTC technology, the critical criteria are high recovery rates and high purity. Current isolation methods suffer from an inherent trade-off between these two...

We report on rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition growth of silicon nanowires (Si NWs) that contain a high density of gold nanoclusters (Au NCs) with a uniform coverage over the entire length of the nanowire sidewalls. The Au NC-coated Si NWs with an antibody-coated surface obtain the unique capability to capture breast cancer cells at twice the...

We report on rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition growth of silicon nanowires (Si NWs) that contain a high density of gold nanoclusters (Au NCs) with a uniform coverage over the entire length of the nanowire sidewalls. The Au NC-coated Si NWs with an antibody-coated surface obtain the unique capability to capture breast cancer cells at twice the...

We have developed a novel circulating tumor cell (CTC) isolation platform for high recovery and purity. It is composed of two processes: 1) selective size amplification of cancer cells using microbeads conjugated with anti-EpCAM to discriminate the size between WBCs and CTCs more clearly, 2) filtration of CTCs using a micro slit filter chip. We des...

We demonstrate a membrane-based microfluidic in vitro cultivation system that regulates the pattern of mechanical stimulation using a micro-modulated syringe pump. Using independent control of flow and compressive force, we applied an in vivo-like mechanical stimulus to bovine embryos in a microfluidic channel. To compare the accuracy of the compre...

This paper describes a multiplexed microfluidic immunohistochemistry (IHC)/immunocytochemistry (ICC) platform for quantitative proteomic profiling in breast cancer samples. Proteomic profiling via ICC was examined for four breast cancer cell lines (AU-565, HCC70, MCF-7, and SK-BR-3). The microfluidic device enabled 20 ICC assays on a biological spe...

From continuous attention to conquer metastatic cancers, the detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is believed to provide potent clues for prediction and prognosis of cancers and tailored therapy. This paper introduces a novel CTC isola-tion method using selective size amplification for target cells and multi-obstacle structure (MOS) filters....

A Gram-reaction-positive, non-motile, non-spore-forming, aerobic rod, designated BXN5-15(T), was isolated from the soil of a ginseng field on Baekdu Mountain in China. Strain BXN5-15(T) grew optimally at 30 °C and pH 6.0-7.0 in the absence of NaCl on R2A agar. Strain BXN5-15(T) displayed β-glucosidase activity, which allowed it to transform ginseno...

Immunocytochemistry (ICC) has been used for assessing antibodies that target specific antigens in a cell via specific epitopes. Although ICC has been regarded as a well established method, it requires many steps for immunoreactions and long time over 4 h. It means that more efficient immunocytochemical staining method should be developed. Moreover,...

Comparison of scores obtained via whole-section analysis (control) versus the MMIHC platform in human breast cancer tissues (n = 105). For ER and PR: negative (−); weak (+); intermediate (++); strong (+++). For HER2: score 0 (−); score 1 (+); score 2 (++); score 3 (+++). For Ki-67: ≤5% (−); 5%<x≤20% (+); 20%<x≤40% (++); >40% (+++). The unit of tumo...

Characterization of the MMIHC platform. (A) Plane and z-stacked confocal laser microscopy images of the reaction channel area under 8 kPa. Reaction channels retained their original rectangular shape and each was separated completely. (B) Surface image of a cell block visualized using white light scanning interferometry. Cells in the reaction channe...

Statistical concordance table of cyclic permutation test, including KCC, χ2 test and p-value. Six cases were tested for reproducibility where four slides were made from the breast tumor of the same patient (total number of tissues: 24). The KCCs were 1.00 for ER, 1.00 for HER2, 1.00 for PR, and 0.96 for Ki-67, respectively. The cyclic permutation t...

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study examining the kinetics of receptor-ligand binding. (A) Concentration profile of the analyte using the conventional method (transient state after 80 s). The red dotted line indicates a tissue sample with antigens. The analyte concentration in the vicinity of the tissue decreased with time because the tissue f...

Images of immunohistochemical staining for PR. (A) An image of PR staining from automatic machine (×400). (B) An image of PR staining from the MMIHC platform (×400). Blue solid arrows indicate non-specific staining. Normally, more non-specific staining was shown in conventional automatic IHC machine. (0.68 MB TIF)

Image analysis of biomarker expression level. (A) A microscopic image acquired via MMIHC. (B) The image was divided into three parts: the staining part (SP), the non-staining part (NSP), and the background. Only the cell area (SP and NSP) was considered to minimize the variation of expression level according to cell density. (C) Image after analysi...

Background: Biomarkers play a key role in risk assessment, assessing treatment response, and detecting recurrence and the investigation of multiple biomarkers may also prove useful in accurate prediction and prognosis of cancers. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) has been a major diagnostic tool to identify therapeutic biomarkers and to subclassify breas...

This work demonstrates a novel microfluidic in vitro cultivation system for embryos that improves their development using a partially constricted channel that mimics peristaltic muscle contraction. Conventional photolithography and a PDMS replica molding process were used to make straight or constricted microchannels. To investigate the effects of...

A microfluidic platform to satisfy both 3D cell culture and cell-based assay is required for credible assay results and improved assay concept in drug discovery. In this article, we demonstrate a microvalve-assisted patterning (MAP) platform to provide a new method for investigating cellular dynamics by generating a linear concentration gradient of...

Cell-based assays are one of the most important steps to select huge amount of drug candidates in drug discovery. To get more credible assay results, cell culture in the form of microscale environment and three-dimension has been exploited by microfluidic hydrodynamic focusing. However, the method still needs an enhanced reliability of scaffold for...

We have developed a novel method for fabricating an embryonic stem cell divider (ESCD) constructed from a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) replica with a square or hexagonal pattern, and have proposed a new dissociation method for human embryonic stem cells (ESCs). An aspect ratio of the device as high as 2 was perfectly replicated in the cutting line...

This paper reports a novel microfluidic platform introducing peptide hydrogel to make biocompatible microenvironment as well as realizing in situ cell-based assays. Collagen composite, OPLA and Puramatrix scaffolds are compared to select good environment for human hepatocellular carcinoma cells (HepG2) by albumin measurement. The selected biocompat...

This article describes a novel microfluidic 3-dimensional encapsulation method via the self-assembling peptide hydrogel. The microfluidic immobilization strategies using a peptide hydrogel have been designed for microfluidic cell-based assays, cocultures, and biomimetic micro blood vessels. A sol-gel transition peptide hydrogel, Puramatrix, is adop...