Dr Abu Sina

NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow

Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology
a.sina@uq.edu.au
+61 7 334 64176

Overview

Dr Abu Sina is currently an NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellow at the Center for Personalized Nanomedicine, Australian Institute for Bioengineering & Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland, Australia. Prior to this, he served as a Visiting Scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard University, and as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Irving Cancer Research Center, Columbia University, NY, USA.

Dr. Sina has earned both national and international acclaim for his notable contributions to advancing translational-focused nano-diagnostic technologies with a focus on early cancer detection from liquid biopsies. He is one of the few leaders in the world who is driving the liquid biopsy-based multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test program. He has had several media appearances so far which include interviews on national (Channel 9, Channel 7, ABC News, Fox News, etc.) and international Television (CBC News, CTV News Canada, etc.) and Radio (4EB, 4BC, ABC Perth, ABC Sunshine coast, SBS) outlets.

Actively participating in scholarly discussions, Dr. Sina has served as a Keynote Speaker, Invited Speaker, and Session Chair at various national and international conferences and seminars. His commitment to excellence has resulted in several prestigious awards, including the Metrohm-EDRACI Young Electrochemist Award 2021, the Queensland Health and Medical Research Award 2019 from the Queensland State Government of Australia, and recognition as a Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials.

Central to his aspirations is a vision to develop point-of-care diagnostic technologies with the potential to revolutionize early disease detection, thereby enhancing overall quality of life.

Research Impacts

Dr. Sina's research is centered on the development of nanotechnologies for applications in liquid biopsy, addressing clinical challenges in medical diagnostics and precision oncology. His expertise spans diverse areas of basic and translational research, encompassing chemistry, molecular biology, nano-biotechnology, liquid biopsy, biosensing, and microfluidics, among others. Notably, his work has pioneered the field of "interfacial biosensing," overcoming limitations associated with existing biosensing techniques.

A standout achievement in his innovative portfolio is the establishment of a DNA nano-signature-based cancer test, widely acknowledged as the 10-minute universal cancer test. This groundbreaking development has garnered extensive coverage in major global news outlets, including CNN, Forbes, The Guardian, CTV News, Smithsonian Magazine, and the New York Post. CNN and BioScope, an online magazine, have recognized his discovery of the 10-minute cancer test as one of the "Top Discoveries/Advances for 2018."

Throughout his research career, marked by 52 publications (12 as the First author and 16 as the corresponding author) and a patent (US Patent App. 17286379), Dr. Sina has accumulated 1865 citations, achieving an H-index of 21 and an i10-index of 33 (Source: Google Scholar). His research has been published in high-impact, discipline-ranked journals such as Nature Communications, Accounts of Chemical Research, ACS Nano, Science Advances, and Advanced Functional Materials.

Dedicated to early cancer detection and personalized treatment, Dr. Sina's research program has secured over $1.5 million in grant funding from government agencies and industries. His research outputs rank in the top 25% for citation with an FWCI score >2. The impact is evident through citations in 1,110 documents across 88 countries and in 23 different subject categories (Scopus, Oct 2023). Notably, he has been cited by authors from over 160 institutions, including Harvard Medical School and the University of California.

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Queensland

Publications

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Supervision

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Available Projects

  • Methylation of DNA is a type of epigenetic signatures that defines the eukaryotic cell’s identity by regulating gene expression. Aberrant methylation in the genome can deregulate the gene expression pathways leading to diseases like cancer. Thus, DNA methylation has been regarded as one of the important biomarkers for cancer. Recent years have seen tremendous advancement in methylation based biomarker discovery providing abundant information about the genomic printing. However, cancer is a versatile disease that often needs multiple biomarker analysis for accurate detection. Current practice in detecting methylation biomarkers in clinic is largely affected by expensive sequencing technique. Recent advancements in electrochemical and optical biosensors have shown great promise in developing inexpensive multiplex platform. Despite of their significant improvement in sensitivity, these methods are restricted by major technological challenges including functionalization of sensor surface, long analysis procedure and invasive sampling. We have recently developed an interfacial biosensing technique to identify DNA methylation using gold-DNA affinity which obviates the need for sensor surface modification. In this study, we aim to develop a novel multiplex micro-device comprising an array of microelectrodes for directly detecting the genomic methylation biomarkers with the mechanism of interfacial adsorption between DNA and metal surfaces. These microelectrodes can significantly increase the assay sensitivity due to the high signal to noise ratio. We believe that this micro-fabricated multiplex platform will find broad applications as simple diagnostic tool in the clinic.

View all Available Projects

Publications

Book Chapter

Journal Article

Conference Publication

  • O'Byrne, K., Shanmugasundaram, K.B., Ahmed, E., Kulasinghe, A., Monkman, J., Fletcher, J.A., Mainwaring, P.N., Masud, M.K., Park, H., Hossain, M.S.A., Yamauchi, Y., Sina, A.A.I., Wuethrich, A. and Trau, M. (2023). Extracellular Small Vesicle Phosphorylated PD-L1 Liquid Biopsy Levels Correlate with Tumour Proportion Score (TPS) in NSCLC. 2023 World Conference on Lung Cancer, Singapore, 9-12 September 2023. New York, NY United States: Elsevier. doi: 10.1016/j.jtho.2023.09.432

  • Shiddiky, Muhammad J, Sina, Abu Ali Ibn, Carracosa, Laura G, Palanisamy, Ramkumar, Rauf, Sakandar and Trau, Matt (2014). Methylsorb: A Simple Method for Quantifying DNA Methylation Using DNA-gold Affinity Interactions. 8th International Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 20-22 December 2014. New York, NY United States: I E E E. doi: 10.1109/ICECE.2014.7027002

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

Completed Supervision

Possible Research Projects

Note for students: The possible research projects listed on this page may not be comprehensive or up to date. Always feel free to contact the staff for more information, and also with your own research ideas.

  • Methylation of DNA is a type of epigenetic signatures that defines the eukaryotic cell’s identity by regulating gene expression. Aberrant methylation in the genome can deregulate the gene expression pathways leading to diseases like cancer. Thus, DNA methylation has been regarded as one of the important biomarkers for cancer. Recent years have seen tremendous advancement in methylation based biomarker discovery providing abundant information about the genomic printing. However, cancer is a versatile disease that often needs multiple biomarker analysis for accurate detection. Current practice in detecting methylation biomarkers in clinic is largely affected by expensive sequencing technique. Recent advancements in electrochemical and optical biosensors have shown great promise in developing inexpensive multiplex platform. Despite of their significant improvement in sensitivity, these methods are restricted by major technological challenges including functionalization of sensor surface, long analysis procedure and invasive sampling. We have recently developed an interfacial biosensing technique to identify DNA methylation using gold-DNA affinity which obviates the need for sensor surface modification. In this study, we aim to develop a novel multiplex micro-device comprising an array of microelectrodes for directly detecting the genomic methylation biomarkers with the mechanism of interfacial adsorption between DNA and metal surfaces. These microelectrodes can significantly increase the assay sensitivity due to the high signal to noise ratio. We believe that this micro-fabricated multiplex platform will find broad applications as simple diagnostic tool in the clinic.