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!

Posted on June 28, 2023 and filed under Grants & Awards, Lab Updates, People.

New review article in Frontiers in Immunology!

Big congratulations to Dr. Tochukwu Ozulumba, Dr. Jennifer Ortiz Cárdenas, and Alyssa Montalbine for writing a wonderful review about models of the lymph node, now online at Frontiers in Immunology! This review captures the state of the art in in vitro, ex vivo, and computation models of lymph node function, as well as the associated challenges and opportunities. It is open access, so enjoy the read!


Posted on May 10, 2023 .

Congratulations to Izzy for receiving the Lester Andrews Undergraduate Research Fellowship in UVA Chemistry!

This award will fund her work this summer, as she pivots from her nearly-completed project on analyzing the crosslinking of biomaterials, to using those biomaterials to advance cell responses in our lymph node chip system. She and her mentor Jon Zatorski took a big leap to write up the proposal on the next project, and it paid off. Congratulations Izzy on this great accomplishment! 

Posted on April 8, 2023 and filed under Collaborations, Grants & Awards, Lab Updates, People.

Professor Pompano and Parris Present at Pittcon!

Parris Anbaei and Prof. Pompano travelled to Philadelphia for the first in-person Pittcon since 2020. We had a great time catching up with colleagues, and getting feedback on our research after two invited talks. Prof. Pompano presented in a symposium organized by lab alumna, Prof. Ashley Ross (Univ. Cincinnati), and Parris presented in a session organized by Sally Gowers from the Boutelle lab (Imperial College, UK).

Posted on March 30, 2023 and filed under Collaborations, Conferences, Lab Updates, People, Presentations.

Congratulations to Tiffany and Parris for the Harrison Fellowship!

This award will fund Tiffany's work this summer to look at the impact of oxygen availability and culture conditions on long-term human tonsil tissue culture.  It's an area that we are all excited to move into, and also synergizes well with the experiments that Sahana and Erin are planning in mouse tissue.  I am looking forward to seeing what we learn from these experiments! Congratulations Tiffany!

Posted on March 1, 2023 and filed under Grants & Awards, Lab Updates, People.

Congratulations to Morgan and Katerina for the Double Hoo Award!

This award will fund their work together this summer to look at how the tumor draining lymph nodes are remodeled before and after metastasis in a breast cancer model.  This exciting project will lay a foundation for understanding the factors that drive tumor cell invasion into the lymph nodes during metastasis, and enable improved models of metastasis and therapies in the future. Congratulations Morgan and Katerina!

Posted on March 1, 2023 and filed under Grants & Awards, Lab Updates, People.

First paper of 2023! Easy fab bubble traps

Congrats to Hannah Musgrove, Amirus (Ovi) Saleheen, and Jon Zatorski on their latest paper, now published in Micromachines as part of the Womens Special Issue! To address the perennial problem of bubbles arising in the tubing of microfluidic cultures and organs-on-chip, they adapted a previously described, passive bubble trap design for fabrication by 3Dprinting or by high-throughput machining. These two fabrication methods enable reproducible, low-cost fabrication at moderate or large throughput, respectively. We share the design files in the linked Dataverse site, so feel free to try them out!

Top panel: cutaway diagram of the bubble trap, with bubbles trapped near the top of a cylindrical chamber by bouyancy, as fluid continues out the bottom of the chamber.  Bottom panel shows photos of 3D printed and machined traps.
Posted on February 12, 2023 and filed under Papers.