NIH Challenge Fund Prize for human immune model

We are so honored that our team's idea won an NIH Complement-ARIE Challenge Prize!

“The National Institutes of Health has announced the winners of a crowdsourcing competition for innovative ideas on New Approach Methodologies, or NAMs to more accurately model human biology. The Complement Animal Research In Experimentation (Complement-ARIE) Challenge Prize competition offered $1,000,000 in total prize money to [twenty] diverse teams with ideas for new ways of using NAMs to conduct basic research, uncover disease mechanisms, and translate knowledge into products and practice.”

Our concept was an Organ-on-Chip system for Population Diversity in Responses to Vaccination, an area that we are passionate about exploring and look forward to opportunities to find funding for this exciting vision in the future.

A fantastic team came together for this idea:
Evangelia Bellas, Temple University
Aarthi Narayanan, George Mason University
Jennifer Munson, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC
Chance John Luckey, University of Virginia Pathology
Rebecca Pompano, UVA Department of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering

All of the Challenge Prize winning ideas sound very exciting to advance models of human biology. You can read them all here:
https://commonfund.nih.gov/complementarie/highlights/nih-announces-winners-complement-arie-challenge-competition

Congratulations to Izzy for receiving the Lester Andrews Undergraduate Research Fellowship in UVA Chemistry!

This award will fund her work this summer, as she pivots from her nearly-completed project on analyzing the crosslinking of biomaterials, to using those biomaterials to advance cell responses in our lymph node chip system. She and her mentor Jon Zatorski took a big leap to write up the proposal on the next project, and it paid off. Congratulations Izzy on this great accomplishment! 

Professor Pompano and Parris Present at Pittcon!

Parris Anbaei and Prof. Pompano travelled to Philadelphia for the first in-person Pittcon since 2020. We had a great time catching up with colleagues, and getting feedback on our research after two invited talks. Prof. Pompano presented in a symposium organized by lab alumna, Prof. Ashley Ross (Univ. Cincinnati), and Parris presented in a session organized by Sally Gowers from the Boutelle lab (Imperial College, UK).

Congratulations to Nadia Cheng with mentor Jonathan Zatorski and Dorienne Hochard with mentor Parris Anbaei for the nano-STAR Summer Fellowship!

Every year, nanoSTAR invites undergraduate students to apply to spend a summer in their UVA laboratory. They match students to nanoscience projects based on their interests and abilities and students will get hands-on laboratory experience while learning the subject. They will prepare for a culminating oral and poster presentations at the end of the program. We are proud of Nadia and Jon for winning this!

Congratulations to Peyton Hamlett and Tochukwu Ozulumba for the GIDI-UP Fellowship!

GIDI-UP is a Summer Research award for undergraduate/postdoctorate fellow pairs. The pair has been granted the award in their research this summer for developing a 3D hydrogel based model of the human lymph node to study vaccination. We are very proud of them!

Jonathan Zatorski and Isabellą Lee Awarded the UVA DoubleHoo Award!

Congratulations to Jon and Izzy who were awarded the UVA DoubleHoo (https://undergraduateresearch.virginia.edu/our-opportunities/grants/double-hoo-award) for their shared project to quantify the extent of photocrosslinking in gels by proton NMR!

New paper: Magnetic impeller pump for organs-on-chip

Congratulations to Sophie Cook and co-author Hannah Musgrove for their paper now available online before print in Lab on a Chip! Sophie invented a creative impeller pump design for in-line recirculaton of media through on-chip cultures and organs-on-chip. The pump does not require any tubing or external pumps, just a magnetic stirring platform that easily fits in the incubator without heating it up. This was an exciting collaboration with Prof. Amy Throckmorton of Drexel University, who conducted advanced fluid dynamic simulations to better understand and predict the fluid flow around the pump and how it controlled flow through the channels.

This pump lays the groundwork for recirculating flow control in long-term cultures and multi-tissue cultures. Sophie and Hannah showed that it was mechanically compatible with recirculating of lymphocytes, and when 3D printed in the right resin, could be used to circulate model lymphocytes overnight.

Sophie Cook named a Presidential Fellowship for Collaborative Neuroscience

This award will enable exciting work to study brain immunity in collaboration with Prof. Tajie Harris in the School of Medicine, as well as unique career development opportunities!

New review: Modeling immunity in vitro

Our first collaborative review article, written with Prof. Jennifer Munson and Jenn Hammel of Virginia Tech teamed up with Pompano Lab students Sophie Cook and Maura Belanger, is out in Annual Reviews of Biomedical Engineering!

We cover models of immune organs (lymph node, bone marrow, spleen, lymphatics, etc) and models of peripheral organs that feature immunity.

For each organ, we systematically review models based on

(i) tissue slices

(ii) microfluidics and organs-on-chip

(iii) engineered models, e.g. 3D cultures

The focus is primarily on models of healthy tissue, though with some discussion of models of inflammatory disease as well. Enjoy!

JH Hammel’, SR Cook’, MC Belanger’, JM Munson, and RR Pompano. “Modeling Immunity In Vitro: Slices, Chips, and Engineered Tissues.” Annual Review of Biomedical Eng, 2021, online ahead of print. [pubmed] ‘Equal contributions.

CIC Collaborative Research Award

CIC Collaborative award to begin July, 2020!

We are honored to be awarded a Collaborative Research Award from the Carter Immunology Center, together with colleagues Kimberly Kelly (Prof. of Biomedical Engineering) and Tajie Harris (Prof. of Neuroscience). This substantial seed funding for a unique collaboration gives us a chance to develop a brand new technology to see into cell-cell communication in tissue. Look for more details in a few months!