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.
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
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
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!
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!
New DEI Journal Club!
Sophie and Jon started a department wide DEI Journal Club this summer! Please read the rest of the article here (interviewed by Hannah): https://chemistry.as.virginia.edu/news/story/8771.
New R01 awarded for models of Multi-Tissue Immunity
We are excited that our work to build multi-organ models of immunity will be funded for the next five years by a $2.4 million award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. This award will fund exciting collaborations with the Throckmorton lab at Drexel University and Drs. Melanie Rutkowski and Anne Sperling here at UVA!
Interested in what we are studying? Read on below.
Communication between the lymph node and the organs it drains is imperative for predicting immune responses to vaccination, infection, and chronic disease, but have been difficult to study in vivo or in vitro.
To address this gap, we will develop a user friendly, microscale system designed specifically to co-culture intact samples of live tissue from the lymph node with other organs, while allowing recirculation of white blood cells as occurs in vivo. After determining the effects of various modes of fluid motion on intact lymph node tissue for the first time, we will generate a simple model of the response of the murine lymph node to vaccination, as a proof-of-principle of this new system for modeling multi-tissue immunity outside the body.
Congrats Hannah and Sophie for Parylene Paper!
Please join me in congratulating Hannah and Sophie for publication of their parylene paper today in ACS Applied Bio Materials! We are excited to share their work showing that despite the severe toxicity of the resins used for light-based 3D printing, a simple chemical coating with parylene-C completely protected fragile primary cells (mouse splenocytes). The same coating protected the device from eroding and absorbing water during experiments. Please read the paper here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsabm.3c00444.
Erin Lawrence appointed to the NIH Biotechnology Training Grant!
Congratulations to Erin for her appointment to the highly competitive T32 training grant for Biotechnology at UVA this year! In addition to supporting her graduate studies and research, this appointment provides additional coursework and an externship in a biotechnology company of her choosing, to prepare future researchers for careers in biotech. We are very proud of her and her ongoing research on building a multi-tissue model of vaccination.
Welcome Julian Bowes!
Julian is joining us as a lab and research technician with plans to attend graduate school in the future. He received a BS in Chemistry and minor in Psychology from UVA as an undergraduate student. Currently, he is working with in-tissue spatially resolved analysis.
