In order to rapidly test the entire setup for dialysis evaluation, including piezoelectric micro motor and recirculating fluid path, a means of quickly evaluating PDMS designs is needed. A mold was created with a multi-print technique in which printer toner…
Category: NRG
BBB Device Design (updated)
The goal of the blood brain barrier device is to co-culture cells in a closed system, with the apical chamber under flow conditions, while still being able to access either chamber for media changes or to introduce new solutions. Electrodes…
Posted in NRG
Closed System Device
One aspect of the blood brain barrier device is that it be a closed flow system. This would not only better mimic an in vivo environment, but also maintain Sema4D activity, negatively affecting endothelial cell junctions and providing a target…
Posted in NRG
Live/Dead Assay for BBB Device
A quick recap: Vaccinex has asked the lab to design a closed system device with the capability to co-culture on microporous membranes. This device would be used to mimic the blood brain barrier, with endothelial cells cultured on the apical…
Posted in NRG
Barcikowski Collaboration Update
Over the last week or so I’ve taken some lovely SEM pictures with Joe, used the light scatter, and ran some separations on filters I assembled myself. Someone from the Barcikowski lab, Dr. Rehbock, got in touch with me and…
Posted in NRG
Vacuole formation on Nitride
Barrett had discovered that growing endothelial cells on pnc-si or tranwells causes vacuoles to form. The vacuoles on pnc-si formed only on the free standing areas of the membrane where there are open pores. The background on pnc-si chips showed…
EO as a function of pore radius
From Jess’ manuscript … From Wikipedia … From Tom’s ACS nano paper … The Dagan equation (2) for flow through short pores used to predict flow through pnc-Si is given by: where r is the average pore radius, DP is…
Posted in NRG
SiMPore's Collaboration with Vaccinex
Vaccinex has developed an antibody, VX15/2503, for Semaphorin 4D, a molecule implicated in axonal guidance mediation and blood brain barrier (BBB) disruption. The role of SiMPore in its partnership with Vaccinex is to produce a workable model of the BBB,…
Posted in NRG
Barcikowski Collaboration Rotation Project
As a rotation student from the Biophysics depart, I’ll be spending the next six weeks or so helping Dr. Stephan Barcikowski use the nanomembranes to do a number of separations as part of a nanofabrication procedure. Dr. Barcikowski makes extremely…
Impact of membrane thickness on EO
One of the surprising results of Jiracai’s studies with thick and thin membranes was that the thicker membranes had a lower capacity to support back pressure than the thinner membranes he used (see table in this post). This is counter…
Posted in NRG
