Dr. Pompano and Alex traveled to the Society for Leukocyte Biology Meeting this past weekend! Dr. Pompano presented an invited talk and Alex presented a poster and shared a session. They both enjoyed meeting new people in the friendly immunology community!
BMES Next Week!
The Pompano Lab is off to BMES in Seattle this week! Come find us at our four presentations listed below. We look forward to connecting with the immunoengineering and biomaterials communities again! Plus, every one of these outstanding students and postdocs is on the job market, either for postdoctoral, industry positions, or faculty positions. Come talk with them!
New DEI Journal Club!
Sophie and Jon started a department wide DEI Journal Club this summer! Please read the rest of the article here (interviewed by Hannah): https://chemistry.as.virginia.edu/news/story/8771.
New R01 awarded for models of Multi-Tissue Immunity
We are excited that our work to build multi-organ models of immunity will be funded for the next five years by a $2.4 million award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. This award will fund exciting collaborations with the Throckmorton lab at Drexel University and Drs. Melanie Rutkowski and Anne Sperling here at UVA!
Interested in what we are studying? Read on below.
Communication between the lymph node and the organs it drains is imperative for predicting immune responses to vaccination, infection, and chronic disease, but have been difficult to study in vivo or in vitro.
To address this gap, we will develop a user friendly, microscale system designed specifically to co-culture intact samples of live tissue from the lymph node with other organs, while allowing recirculation of white blood cells as occurs in vivo. After determining the effects of various modes of fluid motion on intact lymph node tissue for the first time, we will generate a simple model of the response of the murine lymph node to vaccination, as a proof-of-principle of this new system for modeling multi-tissue immunity outside the body.
Congrats Hannah and Sophie for Parylene Paper!
Please join me in congratulating Hannah and Sophie for publication of their parylene paper today in ACS Applied Bio Materials! We are excited to share their work showing that despite the severe toxicity of the resins used for light-based 3D printing, a simple chemical coating with parylene-C completely protected fragile primary cells (mouse splenocytes). The same coating protected the device from eroding and absorbing water during experiments. Please read the paper here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsabm.3c00444.
Erin Lawrence appointed to the NIH Biotechnology Training Grant!
Congratulations to Erin for her appointment to the highly competitive T32 training grant for Biotechnology at UVA this year! In addition to supporting her graduate studies and research, this appointment provides additional coursework and an externship in a biotechnology company of her choosing, to prepare future researchers for careers in biotech. We are very proud of her and her ongoing research on building a multi-tissue model of vaccination.
Welcome Julian Bowes!
Julian is joining us as a lab and research technician with plans to attend graduate school in the future. He received a BS in Chemistry and minor in Psychology from UVA as an undergraduate student. Currently, he is working with in-tissue spatially resolved analysis.
Prof. Pompano named Shannon Mid-Career Fellow
Congratulations to Prof. Pompano, who was named in May 2023 as one of the inaugural class of Shannon Center Mid-Career Fellows at UVA! This fellowship recognizes “rising star” mid-career professors from across the university to receive additional research support and to form a community of Shannon fellows for the next three years.
Read more in the UVA Today article:
New Fellowship Program Recognizes 15 ‘Rising Star’ Faculty Members
Congratulations to Katrina for winning the UVA Cancer Center Trainee Fellowship!
Katrina’s project, The impact of tumor-draining lymph node remodeling on tumor cell invasiveness, was selected as an awardee for the UVA Cancer Center Trainee Fellowship! This was a competitive process, and her significant and exciting progress on her research progress in the past year was cited as a major strength of the renewal application. Congratulations to Katerina on this well-deserved recognition of your accomplishments and plans!
Congratulations to Hannah for winning 1st place in the 3 Minute Research Showcase competition and Djuro for winning a Trainee Poster Award!
We are so proud of Hannah and Djuro for their achievements at MSB 2023 in Tallahasse Florida, co-Chaired by Mike Roper, Jim Edwards, and Professor Pompano!
