Two-tissue microfluidic chip published

Congratulations to Dr. Sangjo Shim for his paper published his paper in Lab on a Chip, and featured in the Organ-, body-, and disease-on-a-chip thematic collection. This is the first microfluidic chip to connect two living tissues in a recirculating loop of media. We hope that this technology will enable many exciting studies of multi-tissue interactions. As a start, in collaboration with the Munson lab at Virginia Tech, he showed that it models one key feature of tumor immunity -- T cell immunosuppression.

See our Publications page for more.

Andrew's Fab paper published!

Do you use antibody fragments? Check out Andrew Kinman's systematic, thoughtful, and very useful protocol for generating fragments at tiny (microgram) scales by pepsin cleavage, now published in Bioconjugate Chemistry. This work should save a lot of time for researchers who fragment antibodies for any purpose.

Prof. Pompano named a 2019 CMBE Rising Star

Rebecca was one of six new Rising Stars recognized with a plenary talk at the 2019 CMBE conference. What an honor to be among this prestigious group of assistant professors! The conference convened in San Diego, California at the start of the new year, and was a fantastic meeting filled with creative new approaches to engineering molecules, cells, and tissues to mimic the complex in vivo environment.

Welcome Jon, Sophie, and Aditya!

The Pompano lab is growing. We welcome 3 new Chemistry PhD students this fall: Jon Zatorski, Aditya Rane, and Sophie Cook. Looking forward to what they will accomplish in the coming years!

Prof. Pompano speaks at Virginia Tech

Prof. Pompano visited our friends at Virginia Tech in the Department of Bioengineering on October 30, hosted by amazing scientist Prof. Jenny Munson. So much interesting work going on at VT, including the immunomicrofluidics in the Jones and Li labs in Biology!

Live immunostaining paper published

We are very proud of Andrew, Ben, and Jacob for publishing their method for fluorescent immunostaining of living lymph node tissue. Most available methods to label structures in tissue are intended for samples that have been fixed (i.e. killed). We showed that it is possible to get beautiful and informative images of tissue structure while the tissue is still alive, without perturbing key functions such as T cell activation. Check out their work in the Journal of Immunological Methods or on our Publications page.

ACS WCC Career Panel

Prof. Pompano hosted the ACS Women Chemist’s Committee for their annual Career Panel Event on October 4, 2018. We were thrilled to meet three highly successful chemists with all different career histories:

• Dr. Bonnie Landy, co-founder and director of brewery operations at Winchester Brew Works in Winchester, VA. BS and MS in Chemical Engineering.

• Dr. Linnette Watkins, professor and department head of Chemistry and Biochemistry at James Madison University. PhD in Chemistry.

• Ms. Debbie Winetzky, applications chemist and product manager at BIO-CAT in Troy, VA. Over 20 years in the chemical industry across the country.

It was a great experience for the students in attendance. Many thanks for Dr. Stephanie Mabry for organizing!

Peach picking

The Pompano lab took a field trip to Chiles Orchard in Crozet to celebrate a successful summer. Lots of peach cobbler the following week. Yum!

Pompano lab joins the UVA Cancer Center

We are thrilled to be the newest member of the UVA Cancer Center as part of the Immunology & Immunotherapy Program.  We look forward to participating in the research of the center and being part of a community that seeks to find treatments and cures for such a devastating set of diseases.

The UVA Cancer Center is one of a prestigious national network of centers supported by the National Cancer Institute at the NIH.

Active Learning for Analytical Chemistry workshop

I was very fortunate to be selected to participate in the NSF-funded Active Learning for Analytical Chemistry workshop, organized by Tom Wenzel of Bates College.  Thirty faculty from all over the country met at beautiful Indiana University Bloomington and worked for four days on developing course materials to better engage their students.  Many thanks to the facilitators and organizers for sharing their experiences and advice, and to the NSF Education division for funding the workshop.  I look forward to applying these activities to my Analytical Chem course this fall.