Bryan Chantigian awarded Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship
Doctoral student Bryan Chantigian has been awarded an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship (IDF) for the 2026-2027 academic year. The IDF provides funding, connections, and resources for Ph.D. students to pursue interdisciplinary research at a University of Minnesota research center or institute over the course of the fellowship year.
Chantigian’s research aims to develop an electronic-based seeded amplification assay (SAA) to help diagnose neurodegenerative diseases. Many of these diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and ALS, rely on diagnoses through family history and symptoms. This can make identification of these diseases difficult, as symptoms can build up for years before a diagnosis is prompted. Chemical tests are usually conducted once symptoms are present, but they are often invasive and use expensive, large equipment. This prevents widespread testing, and opens the question as to how to create a more accessible testing method to provide effective preventative care. Earlier diagnosis offers the possibility of increasing the time between disease onset and symptom presentation, which could allow for more preventative care and better quality of life.
Certain proteins that have been misfolded tend to indicate neurodegenerative diseases, particularly in how they form fibrils (chains) in patients with these diseases. Seeded amplification assays, which are able to reveal fibril presence, work by the injection of a protein test sample into a healthy solution of those same proteins. This results in the healthy proteins misfolding and lengthening any existing fibrils. These fibrils are then broken down by heat or agitation, creating a larger amount of shorter fibrils, which can be sensed due to their higher concentration in the solution which is traditionally done by using fluorescence measurements. Existing SAAs, while robust, are limited by size and cost; the equipment can cost over $40,000 and take up a large footprint in the lab. Given these challenges, electronics and microfluidics-based sensing methods can offer attractive alternatives because of their smaller size and decreased cost. However, current electronic sensing systems are not sensitive enough for effective diagnostics. These systems typically operate at low frequencies, but the presence of ions in biological solutions inhibits the electric field used for sensing. In contrast, high frequencies would allow for the electric field to switch faster than the ions’ ability to counteract the field. In terms of sensitivity, integrating an SAA would alleviate the need for a highly sensitive biosensor by amplifying the concentration of misfolded proteins in positive samples.
Chantigan’s research offers a device that can overcome these challenges. He proposes a nanogap-based transmission line sensor that uses high-frequency signals in conjunction with a microfluidic-based SAA. (Read about the nanogap-based transmission line sensor in npj Biosensing, a Nature publication.) Using the proposed transmission line architectures allows for the manufacture of long nanogaps, which enables high-frequency operations that alleviate sensitivity degrading effects of biological solutions. The long nanogap also allows the sensing electric fields and the proteins being sensed to be on the same scale, which aids in the observation of protein fibril formation and binding at the sensor interface. The use of microfluidics will mean a compact design and the use of acoustic waves to induce protein amplification will do away with the need for external agitation equipment to agitate the testing solution. This will result in a design that is compact overall and costs less. Microfluidic-based amplification has also been shown to increase the speed of certain protein amplification assays, and the integration of an electronic sensor would strengthen the overall sensitivity of the SAA. (Learn about advances in microfluidic-based amplification assay in npj Biosensing, a Nature publication.) Overall, the combination of nanogap-based transmission line sensors and microfluidic-based SAAs have been shown to successfully identify protein binding kinetics, providing an optimistic basis for its cost-friendly ability to aid in widespread testing for neurodegenerative diseases. As such, Chantigian’s ultimate goal is to provide a more accessible and affordable device for more effective preventative care.
Bryan Chantigian earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering with a minor in astrophysics and he achieved his master’s the following year. Now pursuing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, Chantigian has continued to cultivate his investment in the intersection of electrical engineering and astrophysics, doing work with photonics, optical amplifiers, radio frequency, and solid state devices. He has previously completed internships with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), participating in the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program and the Pathways program. SCaN provides personalized mentorship and skill-building opportunities to interns, and the Pathways program provides work to transition interns into full-time employment at the agency, personalized to the alignment between the intern’s interests and NASA’s needs. Chantigian continues his work as an analyst at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory while also working on his doctoral research on nanoelectronic devices and nanophotonic metasurfaces.