Dr. Rebecca Pompano of the University of Virginia

Professor Rebecca Pompano of the University of Virginia will present

"Microfluidic Tools for Spatiotemporal Analyses in Living Tissue"

on January 23, 2019 at 4:10pm in Neville Hall, Room 3

The overarching goal of the Pompano laboratory is to develop bioanalytical methods to see where and when cells communicate with each other during an immune response.  We use microfluidics to achieve local and time-resolved stimulation, and develop novel chemical assays to measure local responses.  In this talk, I will describe an approach to regional stimulation of live lymph node tissue through ports beneath the tissue.  The ports can be fixed in place, for simplicity, or made mobile beneath the tissue, for improved flexibility and user-control over the location of stimulation.  We used this microfluidic strategy to watch the diffusion of bioactive proteins through live lymph node tissue for the first time.  Moving forward, we are combining these devices with live fluorescence microscopy to watch cells and tissues as they interact during immunity and inflammation, brining quantitative molecular stimulation and analysis to problems of chronic inflammatory diseases.