Congratulations Yoojin for NIH Career Rentry Supplement Award!

Please join me in congratulating Yoojin for her successful application for an NIH Career Re-Entry Research Supplement Award!  This award provides ~$600k to support Yoojin's future work on integrating a human lymphoid compartment into our multi-organ models of immunity, as well as strategic opportunities for career development.  Big congratulations to Yoojin on this well deserved award!

Posted on March 5, 2024 and filed under Grants & Awards.

Congratulations Rachel for Harrison Award!

Please join me in congratulating Rachel for her successful application to the Harrison award!  Working with Sophie and Geane, Rachel is helping develop the blood-brain-barrier module to study neuro-immune communication. This award funds her to invest her full effort on this project this summer. Congratulations also to Sophie for her excellent mentoring of Rachel on her proposal.

Posted on March 5, 2024 and filed under Grants & Awards.

Two new preprints!

The Pompano lab has been busy at the start of 2024! Check out our two new preprints on BioRxiv:

Ozulumba et al

And one on a bioanalytical method to map out oxygen consumption and hypoxia in live tissue explants:

Spatially resolved quantification of oxygen consumption rate in ex vivo lymph node slices

by Parastoo Anbaei et al

Anbaei et al

We welcome feedback on these manuscripts and look forward to sharing the revised versions again after peer review!

Posted on January 18, 2024 and filed under Papers, Lab Updates.

Congratulations Dr. Cook!

Congratulations to Sophie Cook on an excellent PhD and defense last week! Here are some pictures from the event. We are all very proud of her!

Posted on November 6, 2023 and filed under Lab Updates.

Yoojin joins the lab!

Before joining the Pompano Laboratory, Yoojin conducted her doctoral research in the department of bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh studying extracellular vesicles in the ECM for tissue engineering. She then completed 2 years of postdoctoral research in the Cardiac Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh investigating cell-matrix mechanisms in the aorta during aneurysms.

Posted on October 24, 2023 .

Rally for Medical Research

On Sept 13-14, Professor Pompano traveled to Washington DC to participate in the Rally for Medical Research to help represent the American Association of immunologists (AAI) and biomedical researchers in Virginia.  She worked with Jacob Schumacher, who is featured in the fifth photo and the Director of Government Affairs for AAI.  On this day each year, biomedical researchers and patient advocates visit their Congressional representatives in the House and Senate to make the case for sustained and robust NIH funding.

If you are interested in advocating for this important issue, especially in an era of tight federal budgets, contact your representatives through the Legislative Action Center:  https://www.votervoice.net/mobile/AACR/Home

Posted on October 23, 2023 and filed under Outreach.

BMES 2023!

The Pompano Lab had a great time in Seattle this year! Everyone enjoyed catching up with old colleagues and meeting new people. Here were the talk titles:

Tochi: Mitigating reactive oxygen species production and increasing gel porosity improves cell viability and spreading in photocrosslinked gelatin-thiol hydrogels

Sophie: A 3D-printed multi-organ-on-chip platform to model brain-immune interactions in neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration

Katerina: Breast cancer cells chemotact to specific regions of lymph node in an ex vivo model of lymph node metastasis

Jon: Building a microphysiological model of the human lymph node follicle border zone

Posted on October 23, 2023 and filed under Presentations.

Society for Leukocyte Biology Meeting

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!

Posted on October 23, 2023 .

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!

Posted on October 8, 2023 .