Move over Oscars – Congratulations to Nik and Sarah on their Masters research awards (MEUSMAs) from McGill’s faculty of Engineering; Camille’s recruitment award from the Department of Biological & Biomedical Engineering; Sonya on her scholarship from Commonwealth Fashions, and to Rachel for her award from l’Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec!
Professional Canadian tennis player, Eugenie Bouchard, visits the Cellular Microenvironment Design Lab! Having always had an interest in mathematics and science, Genie takes a break from the court to become a scientist for a day. She shares her experience on her Instagram page.
Congratulations to Lisa and Sonya who presented their posters last week at the 2017 MicroTAS Conference in Savannah, Georgia. A job well done and a successful first major conference for both innovators!
We blinked, and Ray grew up to be Master Tran! Thanks to Ray, induced pluripotent stem cells will never… feel the same. Congratulations on a stellar Master’s thesis, and we’re looking forward to seeing what you come up with next!
Big congratulations to Nik, who’s poster on smart materials and methodologies for tissue engineering was selected as one of the most outstanding poster contributions at the 2017 McGill Summer Undergraduate Research Experience poster session last week. Well done also to Vickie, Sarah, and Rachel who presented their considerable summer efforts!
Arvind and Nik publish the lab’s first research paper in Lab on a chip! Plastic microfluidic devices have unique advantages over conventional silicone rubber devices, particularly when it comes to cell cultures that involve small, hydrophobic molecules. Given that this applies to many hormones, microfluidicists have to be careful as to how they set up new organs-on-a-chip. Frustrated with how difficult/expensive it is to make new plastic device designs using conventional hot embossing techniques, Arvind built a frankenstein “thermal scriber” to scratch out microfluidics on demand. Brand new plastic device designs ready in a few hours! With our outstanding collaborators in the Spicer lab, they showed that human neutrophils have a surprisingly high capacity to form “Neutrophil extracellular traps”, a mesh-like structure of DNA spewed out of the cell as a defense mechanism against various threats. Check out the full paper at Lab on a Chip, or on our publications page!
Why has Joey been playing with an antarctic icefish for the last few years? These unusual creatures have developed evolutionary adaptations that allow them to survive in harsh environmental conditions, and modelling these adaptations might be the key to designing a microphysiological ‘human’ on a chip for drug discovery. Scaling presents a big practical problem in connecting organ compartments together: how do we make sure the liver has sufficient volume to metabolize a drug dose delivered through the lung surface area, to treat a cancer tumor in the GI tract? The icefish has developed natural adaptations to overcome critical transport limitations imposed by their surroundings, and Joe shows with experimental and analytical models that these ‘tricks’ may be used to design physiologically scaled humans-on-chips. Check out the publication recently out in Technology!
Mad props to Ray and Stephanie, both of whom scored prestigious 3 year awards from NSERC supporting their doctoral research in mechanosensitive differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells, and breast cancer cell and tissue mechanics!
Outstanding Contribution awards at the Ph.D. and Masters level to Stephanie and Sanya for their podium presentations at the 5th annual Polytechnique/McGill Chemical Engineering Research Day, for their talks on smart material mechanosensors and bacterial infection co-culture models. Congratulations!
Happy New Year! Welcome and congratulations to Carley and Sonya, both new graduate students who will be joining our cancer team. They received MEDA and EUL awards to support their work- we’re extremely grateful for the support provided through these programs.
