Introduction Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) is a bioactive sphingolipid with known paradoxical effects on endothelial cell (EC) barrier regulation. S1P binds 5 GPCRs: S1PR1 (Endothelial differentiation gene (EDG)-1), S1PR2 (EDG-5), S1PR3 (EDG-3), S1PR4 (EDG-6), and S1PR5 (EDG-8). Despite the aliases, endothelial cells…
Category: NRG
Collagen IV is deposited below human umbilical vein endothelial cells
Introduction My previous post focused on attempts to reproducibly generate collagen IV with human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) so that we would be able to establish protocols for basement membrane protein detection and degradation measurement. Following my presentation on…
Plasma Problems
Introduction This post will detail the work completed in the last chapter of my Thesis. The overarching goal of this chapter was to perform dialysis on whole blood utilizing a serial-separation system. This system would first: generate plasma from whole…
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Unqualified Engineering: Modifying ALine Devices For Vaccinia Virus Capture
Since the arrival of ALine devices on the diagnostic scene during the SARS-CoV-2 sensor project, much of my effort has been focused on getting them to work properly with biological targets. With plenty of data showing successful operation of these…
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Exploring Formlabs SLA 3D printing for cell culture applications
The initial purpose of exploring formlabs SLA 3D printer for a collaboration with Dr. Nicola Marchi (link to previous post). The purpose of the this work was gaining the ability to use a simple membrane on 3D printed platform…
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The End (Regretfully Without Commentary from Far Away Tropical Islands…)
Hello All, I wished to be writing this from some far away tropical resort, as I was told PhD students of the past used to do before they defended their theses. Instead, this comes straight from the ROC homeland, deep…
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Measuring changes in endothelial basement membrane integrity
Introduction Inflammatory diseases have the potential to disrupt blood vessel permeability. This has serious ramifications for the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which is the interface between the vasculature and the brain. A healthy BBB allows essential nutrients to pass through while…
Maintaining Polarized Inflammation and ICAM-1 mAb Blocking – FINAL Polarized TNF-alpha Revision Experiments
Introduction Read the manuscript here: Integrative Biology Publication Please refer to the linked manuscript for a detailed introduction. In short, we have been interested in characterizing the role of endothelial cell (EC) apicobasal polarity in inflammation. While usually reserved for…
Creating Unwanted Vacuoles in Endothelial Cells With Flow – Mossu et al – unpublished
Vacuoles with pulling flow vs pushing flow This video shows an example of the first trials with the uSim flow cell (Tejas’ early versions) when creating laminar flow over a monolayer of BLECs – see Mossu et al, JCBFM 2018…
Microengineered three-dimensional collagen fiber landscapes with independently tunable anisotropy and directionality
Link to BioRxiv paper The extracellular matrix in vivo is composed of fibers arranged with varying degrees of alignment in different directions. The extent of alignment (anisotropy) and the directionality of fibers are an indicator of breast cancer metastasis, influence…
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