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Artist’s conception of a microbrain bioreactor. The upper chamber contains the neurons and an artificial capillary that carries blood to the brain surrounded by the cells that make up the blood-brain barrier. The lower layer is filled with cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) and contains an artificial choroid plexus (red) that makes CSF and a venule (blue) that carries blood away from the brain, along with a collection of cells that form the blood-CSF and CSF-brain barriers. Collectively, all these cells will reproduce the microenvironment found in the brain. The entire device will be about the size of a grain of rice. © Dominic Doyle and Frank Block / Vanderbilt
Creating such a "microbrain bioreactor" is the challenge of a new $2.1 million research grant awarded to an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the Cleveland Clinic and Meharry Medical College, USA. The grant is one of 17 that are being issued by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health as part of a $70 million "Tissue Chip for Drug Testing" program. The five-year program is a cooperative effort on the part of NIH, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the FDA.
Transparent Thin Films of ITO // Chemists Advance Clear Conductive Films © Based on Material by Brown University
In a new study, researchers from Brown University (US) and ATMI Inc. report the best-ever transparency and conductivity performance for an ITO made using a chemical solution, which is potentially the facile, low-cost method manufacturers want. "Our technology is already at the performance level for application in resistive touch screens," said Jonghun Lee, a Brown chemistry graduate student and lead author of the paper.