Pancreatic islets are heavily vascularized micro-organs containing insulin secreting beta-cells coupled with endothelial cells (EC). These EC slowly deteriorate in static culture, precluding long term study of beta-cell-EC interaction, and likely limiting tissue revascularization post-transplantation. We postulate this EC deterioration is due to an absence of hemodynamics, blood movement. We created a microfluidic device to mimic aspects of hemodynamics, delivering a range of media flow to ex vivo islets. With our resulting desk-top system, we have conducted long term incubations (72 hrs), fixed tissue treatments (maintaining endothelial cell morphology) and real-time live tissue imaging (glucose-stimulated Ca2+-response). Our data show that flow in a microfluidic device maintains EC morphology in ex vivo islets better than non-flowing culture, providing an improved platform to study ex vivo islets and to examine the interaction between beta-cells and EC. Our data also suggest an opportunity to prime islet EC for revascularization using microfluidic flow prior to transplantation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/25460 |
| Date | 17 December 2010 |
| Creators | Crocker, Alana |
| Contributors | Rocheleau, Jonathan |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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