Sehrish Iftikhar & fungicide screening | My Microfluidics Career

Sehrish Iftikhar PhD is working on the MAHT-FunSST project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 MSCA-IF under grant agreement No 843162.

I have been looking for solutions to perform rapid and high throughput screening of fungicides.  During my M.Sc. and Ph.D., I have been extensively working with antifungal agents and fungicides. I know the huge amount of lab work required to screen the antifungal agents which is arduous and very time consuming.

In July 2018, I received an email for MSCA IF application and found the opportunity to apply with Elvesys. Then I started to look into the details and applications of microfluidics in Plant Pathology. Before that, I was totally unfamiliar with the field of microfluidics but once I started to look into details, it was super-interesting and fascinating in addition to its various advantages (low reagent consumption, manipulation of cell number and density, monitoring of a high spatial and temporal resolution). So that is how I discovered microfluidics. As I was already looking for the screening methods of antimicrobial agents, this opportunity allowed me to develop new tools for screening which are more efficient, less time consuming and cost effective.

Conventional screening methods are time consuming. Considering the importance of antifungal screening, a microfluidic chip has potential to yield a powerful tool for large-scale, rapid, and automated screening. I am trying to develop a novel lab-on-chip platform to allow fast screening of fungal pathogens which can help in timely control of diseases and reducing food loss. Miniaturization, automation, integration, high-throughput analysis, and replication in same device are some of the factors which would be impossible without microfluidics in fungicide screening. In addition, new insights into fungicide mode of action can be obtained by observing single conidia via enhanced dynamic control over the microenvironment such as providing nutrients and growth factors. The integration of simple, profoundly efficient and high throughput lab-on-chip model is the key benefit of a device-based system compared to conventional protocols.

“The device will minimize the cost of fungicide development and screening, thus reducing the economic burden in the EU as well as having large implications on improving the production of food globally.”

Fungicide and antimicrobial development and screening is stuck in an innovation gap, in which it incurs staggering expenses and takes many years to get a fungicide/antimicrobial to market. Presently, antifungal agents and fungicides are of paramount importance to ensure the crop production. Loss of sensitivity of fungal pathogens and excessive spraying results not only in high cost but can also cause more resistant pathogens to develop. Also, emerging fungal threats to plants challenge agriculture and ecosystem resilience.

The incorporation of an innovative spore-based high throughput screening (HTS) platform will set a novel standard to customize the fungicide screening techniques that are currently missing from existing in vitro models. So, there is a dire need to screen already available fungicides and to identify new antifungal scaffolds which requires long and laborious experimental work. A microfluidic-based antifungal screening platform can allow reproducible and high throughput screening at a relatively lower cost. The device will minimize the cost of fungicide development and screening, thus reducing the economic burden in the EU as well as having large implications on improving the production of food globally.

Precisely defined manufacturing parameters will offer opportunities for scale-up and commercialization to meet larger-scale agricultural demand, opening the door to innovative pre- and in-field screening of fungicides.

Do you already know what challenges in research you want to tackle next?

I have successfully encapsulated the single spore of the fungi and it is happily growing inside the droplet. Also, I am able to screen different concentrations of the fungicides.

The next challenge is to automatize the whole setup so that the users can “plug and play” with it. Also, I am considering to achieve long-term incubation such that fungicide efficacy can be assessed throughout the developmental process of spore. Although it sounds simple, imaging a large number of freely moving spores becomes a great technical challenge. The platform will result in reduced analysis time and switching from conventional bench-top to lab-on-a-chip for fungicides screening.

Curious about the MAHT-FunSST project and Sehrish’s work? Have a look at our project page  about high throughput fungicide screening.