The SepCon filtration devices represent an innovative housing solution for Silicon Nitride membranes utilized in the filtration of microparticles and nanoparticles. In assessing compatibility, I conducted a test to evaluate the suitability of Aquamarijn’s microsieve membranes with our existing SepCon devices used in microplastic research. In the initial experiment, a standard SepCon assembly and filtration…
Introduction The modular μSiM is based on a 96-well plate format with a 100 μl open well. While these devices have proven extremely useful for various barrier models including the blood-brain barrier1 and the tendon-vascular interface2, there is a need to transform the open well into a fluidic channel. A closed channel device would enable…
Introduction Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that is characterized by accumulation of amyloid beta (Aβ) peptides and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) made of aggregates of the protein tau (1,2). It results in the destruction of neurons and their connections due to this accumulation of amyloid beta and tau (3). Tau is a microtubule associated…
Introduction The Slide Body (Figure 1) has been used for a long time to image μSiM devices. This slide body has the same footprint as a traditional microscope slide but is designed to hold up to 2 μSim devices for imaging. The device has an open center with thin ledges where the edges of the…
Introduction Sepsis refers to an uncontrolled systemic inflammatory response which can result from bacterial blood infections. We have long been interested in developing a sepsis model using the μSiM-BBB platform because the neuroinflammation stemming from sepsis can cause severe BBB disruption. For the majority of our stimulation experiments we have relied on cytomix, a cocktail…
The two barrier anatomy of the post-capillary NVU and why it matters At the post-capilliary venule, the blood-brain barrier (BBB) is actually two barriers in series: 1) one created by the pericyte/BMEC layer at the blood interface and 2) one created by astrocytes and the astrocyte-produced glia limitans at the interface with the brain. We’ll…
Dave Fang posted a poster in 2010 about particles found in DI water. I encountered the same issue during the nano-pocket permeability experiment. He said, “I’ve become increasingly suspicious of membrane clogging during the … permeability experiments.” I conducted an experiment with ultrapure water (UPW), typically filling a 1L glass container from a UPW machine….
Introduction We are interested in exploring whether certain types of extracellular vesicles (EVs) may be more likely to become trapped while crossing the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Specifically, we are curious if EVs possessing certain types of surface integrins might bind to the vascular basement membrane that surrounds the exterior of brain blood vessels to become…
Introduction As what we’ve learned from the previous “Catch-and-Display Immunoassay” (CAD-IA) trials, we switched to an antibody pair from OriGene with low non-specific binding ability to each other and start to conduct ultracentrifugation for all reactive reagents for the reduction of protein aggregations. However, we found an inconsistency of co-localization percentage of immunocomplexes and beads…
Author: Kevin Ling Dysfunction of the outer retinal blood barrier (oRBB), which is composed of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), Bruch’s membrane, and choriocapillaris (CC), is implicated in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which causes irreversible central vision loss [1-4]. AMD is the leading cause of blindness in industrialized countries; it is estimated that by 2040,…
