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…
Introduction/Methods As part of our investigation into neutrophil transmigration on tissue chip systems featuring HUVEC monolayers, I have been working on developing code for both cell state analysis and tracking using Wolfram Mathematica (and occasionally Python). This project relies on…
Introduction Phase-contrast microscopy is widely utilised in live cell imaging, with pixel segmentation protocols in particular finding widespread usage as a means to computationally isolate cells from a tissue-culture background. Computer segmentation allows for the analysis of individual cell properties…
Introduction Selective leukocyte interactions with endothelial barriers are a characteristic component of the inflammatory response process. These spatio-temporal interactions can mechanically remodel local tissue, as well as damage healthy tissue with robust inflammation stemming from an over-reactive immune response. This…
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…
IntroductionThe ability to continuously sample and assay for the levels of soluble factors without disrupting the microenvironment is important to acquire sequential secretion profiles in BBB experiments on an uSIM module. Combining small volume sampling, buffer replenishment and sensitive pedELISA…
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…
Introduction A healthy blood-brain barrier is not permissive to most small molecules, but during inflammation, tight junctions weaken and the barrier becomes more permissive. We have developed an in situ permeability assay that tracks diffusion across a cell monolayer and…
Introduction Sepsis is a serious condition where unregulated systemic inflammation can cause organ failure and death. Recent evidence has also shown that sepsis can cause cognitive impairment in surviving patients. However, the mechanisms that cause sepsis-related damage to the brain…
Introduction Human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived blood-brain barrier (BBB) models have proven to be useful to study disease pathomechanisms and drug delivery into the central nervous system. Currently available hiPSC-derived BBB models are well characterized with respect to diffusion…
