Dr. Pompano and Jennifer Ortiz flew to Phoenix to present at MRS 2018 (Materials Research Society national meeting), in a special 2-day symposium on Immuno-modulatory biomaterials. The symposium was organized by Susan Thomas (GA Tech), Evan Scott (Northwestern), and Kara Spiller (Drexel). Such exciting science is being done in this area, led by a wonderful community of researchers -- we are excited to see the innovations to come.
Andrew presents at Pittcon
PhD student Andrew Kinman represented our lab at Pittcon this year in Orlando in late February. He presented his exciting recent work in the Sunday poster session at this national gathering of analytical chemists. Many thanks to those who offered feedback on his project, a microfluidic device for optimization of protein derivatization reactions. We look forward to publishing his work in a few months!
Austin advances to PhD candidacy
Congratulations to Austin for successfully completing his PhD candidacy exam in February! We look forward to seeing all you accomplish.
Celebration after PhD qualifying exams were over!
Photo credit: Prof. Jim Demas
NIH funds the Pompano lab!
Huge news for our research: The NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has awarded our lab more than $1.4 million over five years to fund our efforts to create a new experimental model of the immune system. By combining live lymph node tissue and microfluidic technology, we will be able to look closely that the events that happen locally inside the tissue. This work will inform the development of new anti-inflammatory immunotherapies.
Many thanks to the NIH NIAID for their support, and to Prof. John Lukens for collaborating with us on this project.
Charlottesville High School visits for science-&-art field trip
On November 29, we were lucky to host Charlottesville High School for the first ever CHS-UVA Science-and-Art field trip to the Department of Chemistry! Twenty-nine students from AP Chemistry, Art I, and Honors Studio Art came to visit for tours of the science labs, presentations from graduate students, and a unique art activity designed by Ms. Rachel McLaughlin, art teacher from CHS. The art featured surrealist portraits, where faces were recombined on puzzle pieces, to convey the idea of "organ-on-chip": fabricating organs from molecules and cells and rearranging their pieces in the chemistry lab.
"One thing that I really enjoyed was being able to see the two microscopes in the labs we visited. In each one, we were able to see cells up close and that is something I've never seen. It was a fun and eye-opening experience. Another thing that was really cool was hearing about the organ on a chip because it’s such an amazing idea!" -- A. M., 10th grade
"I'm really interested in both chemistry and art so being able to see how those two intersect was really cool for me. Also being able to see the applications of some of the ideas we talk about in art class being able to be used in medical advancements through chemistry is inspiring." -- S. L., 11th grade
Many thanks to CHS teachers Rachel McLaughlin (art), Rhoda Baker (chemistry), and Sherry Hodges (chemistry) for coming and bringing their students! Also, the tours and talks would not have been possible without Charles Richardson from Gahlmann lab, Mimi Shin from the Venton lab, Nathan Swami from the Swami lab, and Lauren Russell from the Lampe lab.
We are grateful to the Department of Chemistry for their support of this event.
Ashley's Diffusion paper is in press!
Our latest paper is now available online in Analytica Chimica Acta. We described the first method to measure diffusion of bioactive proteins in living tissue without an invasive probe, and we used it to measure the diffusion of cytokines through living lymph node tissue. In the future, these measurements and others made with this tool will be used to make simulations of the immune system more realistic.
Pompano group at MicroTAS
We are proud that Meg Catterton and Sangjo Shim both presented posters to the international audience MicroTAS 2017 in Savannah, Georgia this year. Their work was well received. We enjoyed talking with fellow microfluidics researchers from all over the world, and catching up with former Ismaglov lab members!
Welcome Aruna and Paola
The Pompano lab is growing. We welcomed Aruna Sastri and Paola Covarrubias this semester. Aruna is earning her Masters degree in Chemistry this year and plans to work on novel methods to study lymphocytes in action. Paola is a first-year undergraduate who joins us from Dallas, Texas. She plans to work on methods to keep lymph node tissue alive in culture -- hopefully for weeks at a time! Good luck to both of them.
Prof. Pompano speaks at Hartwell Annual Meeting
Dr. Pompano presented our lab's latest work at the annual meeting of The Hartwell Foundation, held at Duke University. It was great to meet with approximately forty researchers all conducting creative, cutting-edge research to help the children of the United States. Many thanks to The Hartwell Foundation for such a stimulating meeting.
Dr. Ashley Ross Featured in C&E News
Congratulations to former post-doc Ashley Ross who was featured in C&E news this week! The article describes her work done in our lab to use a new microfluidic system to measure diffusion of proteins through living tissue.
Click the link below for the full story:
http://acsmeetings.cenmag.org/watching-immune-proteins-and-therapeutics-diffuse-through-lymph-nodes/
We wish Ashley the best of luck at her new appointment as an Assistant Professor at the University of Cinncinatti Ohio!
