New paper: Fluorination of 3D printed chips

Megan Catterton’s latest paper is out in Langmuir! We report a protocol for fluorosilanization of SLA or DLP 3D printed chips, to give them a Teflon-like surface. Fluorination of 3D printed microfluidic chips was challenging before, but thanks to Megan’s work, it is now straightforward. Her method provides easy access to patterned hydrophobicity on the surface of the chip, and to two-phase droplet microfluidics.

Catterton M, Montalbine AN (#), & Pompano RR. “Selective Fluorination of the Surface of Polymeric Materials After Stereolithography 3D Printing.” Langmuir (2021). Accepted. [Publisher link]

Welcome, award-winning summer researchers

We welcome Meredith Davis, Bond Sittipongpittaya, and Erica Kem to the lab IN PERSON for the summer! It is a delight to have our talented undergraduates in the lab again after a long COVID-driven year.

All three won awards to fund their summer work!

• Meredith received a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Biomanufacturing

• Bond received a Dept of Chemistry Summer Research Fellowship

• Erica received a DoubleHoo award, together with her graduate mentor Alex Ball.

Congrats to all three on this incredible set of accomplishments.

Meredith and Bond are working on computational and experimental models of cytokine transit and capture in the lymph node, and Erica is working on a new probe to measure glucose uptake in vaccinated lymph nodes. We are looking forward to all that you will learn this summer!

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.

New R21 funding for protein mapping

We are thrilled to announce that that our work on mapping protein distribution in living tissues has been awarded two years of funding by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health. This R21 funding will support a new collaboration between Prof. Kimberly Kelly in BME, Prof. Tajie Harris in Neuroscience, and ourselves, to develop a novel method to see where proteins used to communicate in the immune system are released in live tissues. We are looking forward to this adventurous project!

Alex + Erica win Double Hoo Research Grant

We heartily congratulate undergraduate researcher Erica Kem and graduate student Alex Ball, who were awarded a well-deserved Double Hoo Research Grant! This will fund their research together to measure the response of lymph nodes after vaccination with different adjuvants. They conceived of and drafted their proposal themselves, so we are extra proud of them.

The Double Hoo Research Grant supports between 10-15 pairs of undergraduate and graduate students from across the university each year. The program is intended to build collaborative interactions between the undergraduate and graduate communities throughout the University. These collaborations provide opportunities for more advanced research by undergraduates and valuable mentoring experiences for graduate students.

Sophie wins GSAC Research Grant!

We heartily congratulate Sophie, who was awarded a Spring 2021 research grant from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Council.  These are competitive awards and an honor to receive.  She wrote a compelling proposal to further her development of a miniaturized recirculating pump with a brand new 3D printer that is safe to use from home during the ongoing pandemic, plus parts for a new type of motor.  Excellent work, Sophie!

 http://gradcouncil.com/research/gsasc-research-grant

Hannah enters PhD candidacy!

Congratulations to 2nd year student Hannah Musgrove, who earned a Pass on the PhD candidacy exam this month. She is now officially a PhD candidate. We look forward to seeing her research develop in the area of 3D printed microchips and hybrid tissue-chips. Congrats Hannah!

Prof. Pompano contributes to article on active learning in remote courses

Prof. Pompano co-authored a paper with Prof. and Chair Jill Venton on how active learning helps engage students during remote courses. The article includes many tips and lessons learned from Prof. Pompano’s Analytical courses, which were offered remotely in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article is part of a series organized by Analytical Bioanalytical Chemistry on teaching during the pandemic. We hope that it is helpful!

Two new papers on lymph node slices

Two papers were published from our lab in late 2020 and early 2021, establishing the methods and possibilities of using murine lymph node slices to study short-term adaptive immune responses.

Congratulations to Maura Belanger et al, for completing and publishing many years of work in ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, 2021.

Acute Lymph Node Slices Are a Functional Model System to Study Immunity Ex Vivo

This work establishes our best practices for collection of murine lymph node slices, demonstrates a lack of overt inflammation from the process of slicing, and characterizes their ability to respond to direct and indirect T cell stimulation. Finally, it provides some of the first evidence that lymph node slices from vaccinated animals can response to antigen ex vivo. We look forward to continuing to share this platform with other researchers.

Detergent wash improves vaccinated lymph node handling ex vivo

Congratulations to Alex Ball et al, who recently solved a longstanding bottleneck in our lab. We found that lymph nodes from vaccinated animals were the most difficult to slice, because did often failed to adhere to the supporting agarose hydrogel. Alex worked out a simple method to solve this problem, via a quick dip in a gentle detergent solution. We share this technical advance in the Journal of Immunological Methods, 2021.

Congratulations to Maura, Alex, and the entire team!

Dr. Pompano presents keynote at MRS symposium

MRS 2020: On December 2, 2020, Dr. Pompano presented one of two live keynote talks in the symposium, “Biomaterials for Studying and Controlling the Immune System,” organized by Evan Scott, Kara Spiller, Eric Appel, and Derfogail Delcassian. The talk was followed by a thought-provoking panel discussion on the role of biomaterials in directing immunity, particularly for COVID-19 vaccination and against autoimmune diseases, with Joel Collier, Ben Keselowsky, Lonnie Shea, Ankur Singh, and Chris Jewell.