The Long Road to Wearable Dialysis

Last week when I reported no membrane breakage after a week of HUVEC culture, I showed a phase micrograph on day 7.  This week I tracked the HUVECs a bit more closely with the microscope. This is 10X, HUVEC P5, initial seeding density of 32,500 cells/insert.  I tried to capture approximately the same area on…

The goal here is to see if by using our membrane we can measure and separate different pore wall interaction effects of gas molecules passing through a pore. First, some theory. The flow through every pore of particular aspect ratio (L/d) is determined by pore’s transmission probability value (W), which is the probability of the…

We are happy to be back this summer. Anthony has been working on setting up a system that mimics Kilean’s dialysis devices. Our approach is different in two important ways. First, we are using PETLs, instead of PDMS/glass.  For those who are not familiar with PETLs, here is a short summary: Commercial laminating pouches made…

As a step to identifying the particles that I am capturing in my systems, I am attempting to do an immunogold labeling with a CD 63 primary antibody and a 10 nm gold conjugated secondary. It is possible to run this analysis in an SEM, but the best confirmation method is using a TEM and…

Over the weekend, I resubmitted our adult Adipose-Derived Stem Cell (ADSC) paper titled: Membranes Promote Endothelial Differentiation of Adipose-Derived Stem Cells and Perivascular Interactions There were three main findings: 1.) ADSCs can be induced to express CD31 (PECAM-1) like endothelial cells.  a.) Several prior studies used Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) at 50 ng/mL to…

In order to figure out the relationship between grain size and pore size, I tried to use XRD measurement to determine the grain size by Scherrer equation. t = kλ/(B cosθ) where t is the average grain size, k is the shape factor that is in the range 0.87-1.0 (it is usually assumed to be…