1 Biomedical Engineering Department, McGill University, CANADA 2 Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, McGill University, CANADA Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT Microfluidic systems are increasingly being used for the culture and study of dissociated cells because they facilitate drug screening and chemotaxis studies using minute amounts of chemicals. However, microfluidics ...

Pluripotent cells of a teratocarcinoma clonal line differentiate into various tissues when they are cultivated in submerged cultures. We describe here the formation of endodermal vesicles and blood islands in organotypic cultures of such cells. These are the first macroscopically visible tissues to appear in organ culture and they give rise to megalocytes, the ultimate stage of blood cell evolu...

Epileptogenesis in vivo can be altered by manipulation of molecules such as cytokines and complement that subserve intercellular signaling in both the inflammatory and central nervous systems. Because of the dual roles of these signaling molecules, it has been difficult to precisely define the role of systemic inflammation in epileptogenesis. Organotypic hippocampal brain slices can be maintain...

Inflammation-induced release of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) changes breathing patterns and the response to CO2 levels. This may have fatal consequences in newborn babies and result in sudden infant death. To elucidate the underlying mechanisms, we present a novel breathing brainstem organotypic culture that generates rhythmic neural network and motor activity for 3 weeks. We show that increased CO2...

Introduction: Recent studies have demonstrated functional and histological recovery of injured spinal cord in animal models. However, there are non-permissive milieu surrounding the injured spinal cord due to the inhibitory factors, especially chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan (CSPG) and Nogo. CSPG is originally the extracellular matrix contained within a glia scar. Nogo regulates the abnormal a...

Inhibitory and excitatory connections of remarkably precise topographic order are characteristic features of the mammalian auditory system, particularly within the superior olivary complex (SOC). Little is known about the requirements for the correct development of these specific connections. Previous in vivo experiments have demonstrated a high expression of calcium-binding proteins in this sy...

The course of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and type 2 (HSV-2) and varicella-zoster virus (VZV) infections in squamous epithelial cells cultured in a three-dimensional organotypic raft culture was tested. In these raft cultures, normal human keratinocytes isolated from neonatal foreskins grown at the air-liquid interface stratified and differentiated, reproducing a fully differentiated ep...