Paper: Blue particles to label cells

Congratulations to Maura Belanger and Meng Zhuang from the Fraser lab for the publication of their work in Biomaterials Science. This project was initiated by talented undergraduate Kristen Richey several years ago.

We show that boron based, blue-fluorescent nanoparticles make good labels for endocytic immune cells in fluorescence imaging or flow cytometry. 

Take advantage of that underutilized blue channel on your microscope.

Advance article accessible here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2020/BM/C9BM01572H

NIH U01 for Lymph Node Chip

This week we learned that we have officially been awarded a $3.3 million dollar grant to generate the world’s first spatially organized micro-physiological model of a human lymph node. This U01 award from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at the National Institutes of Heath provides 5 years of funding for this project.

We are delighted to work with a stellar team of researchers, including:

• Jennifer Munson, PhD at Virginia Tech

• John Luckey, MD, UVA Pathology

• Tom Braciale, MD PhD, UVA Pathology

As new members of the NIH-sponsored Organ-on-chip Consortium, we are looking forward to bringing a lymph node to the burgeoning human-on-chip system!

Two-tissue microfluidic chip published

Congratulations to Dr. Sangjo Shim for his paper published his paper in Lab on a Chip, and featured in the Organ-, body-, and disease-on-a-chip thematic collection. This is the first microfluidic chip to connect two living tissues in a recirculating loop of media. We hope that this technology will enable many exciting studies of multi-tissue interactions. As a start, in collaboration with the Munson lab at Virginia Tech, he showed that it models one key feature of tumor immunity -- T cell immunosuppression.

See our Publications page for more.

Pompano lab joins the UVA Cancer Center

We are thrilled to be the newest member of the UVA Cancer Center as part of the Immunology & Immunotherapy Program.  We look forward to participating in the research of the center and being part of a community that seeks to find treatments and cures for such a devastating set of diseases.

The UVA Cancer Center is one of a prestigious national network of centers supported by the National Cancer Institute at the NIH.

Pompano and Rutkowski awarded collaborative research grant

We are honored that the Pompano lab and Rutkowski lab were awarded a 2018 Collaborative Research Project Award in the amount of $75,000 from the Carter Immunology Center.  According to the program announcement,

The goal of this award is to increase the level of collaborative activity among members of the Carter Immunology Center; bring together individuals and laboratories with complementary skills and perspectives; encourage the development of multi-investigator awards, which generally have higher budgets and more comprehensive scope of research activities; and to drive high quality science and encourage its translation into treatments for disease. 

We are excited to begin work on a new model of tumor immunity for this project!  This award was generously funded by the Carter Foundation. 

Congratulations to Drake Dixon!

One of our very talented undergraduate students, Drake Dixon, has been awarded both a nanoSTAR fellowship and a College Science Scholar's award for his work this summer.  His project is entitled "Utilizing boron nanoparticles to develop a novel immunometabolism assay."  This work will be in collaboration with the Fraser lab here at UVA.