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Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay reports from
MicroTAS 2004—Malmö, Sweden.
Reconstructing the liver Many drugs in clinical trials don’t make it to pharmacy shelves because they unexpectedly damage the liver. Researchers would prefer to assay drugs on cultured liver cells for toxicity. However, liver cells are notoriously difficult to culture because they rapidly lose their liver-specific functions when grown in Petri dishes. To develop liver cultures for assays, Linda Griffith and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have designed a device that permits cells to be cultured in 3-D (Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2002, 78, 257–269). The liver cells remain stable in the device for as long as two weeks (Tissue Eng. 2002, 8, 499–513). The investigators have now built two versions of the device. One version is a lab-scale prototype that can be kept in a
37 °C incubator. The second version is a field-portable, battery-operated instrument with its own environmental control that can be used as a sensor for biological warfare agents. Griffith says that the cells inside the device can be monitored for a change in their metabolism to see whether they have been exposed to a toxin. The device’s central piece is the scaffold, which is a membrane 200 µm in thickness made of either silicon or plastic. Channels are cut into the scaffold. Griffith and colleagues coat the channels with a protein, such as collagen, that coaxes liver cells to adhere to the channel walls and form 3-D structures. The scaffold sits in a housing through which cell culture medium gets pumped. The fluid flows over and through the 3-D culture of cells, in much the same way that blood flows around and through
the liver. The housing is transparent so that the cells can be monitored by twophoton or fluorescence microscopy. Griffith and colleagues have carried out tests to ensure that the cells maintain their liver-specific function in the device. One test proves that rat liver cells can metabolize testosterone. “You can think of testosterone as a model drug,” says Griffith. “The same enzymes involved in the metabolism of testosterone [also] metabolize drugs.” The device is not just limited to liver cells. “We have used [it] for embryonic stem cells,” says Griffith. But for now, Griffith and colleagues are focusing on developing liver models for diseases such as hepatitis C. They hope the 3-D cultured liver cells will help researchers understand how these diseases progress and how chronic exposure to toxins damages the liver.
invention of the electrochemical scanning microscope, his pioneering research in electrochemistry led to the discovery of electrogenerated chemiluminescence, which paved the way for advances in areas such as DNA analysis and HIV testing. Bard and his colleagues used electrochemistry in their discovery of small and dense nanocells that could potentially accommodate substantial amounts of computer memory. His work in solar energy also led to the development of a photochemical method to decompose pollutants. Bard is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and served as editor in chief of the Journal of the American Chemical Society from 1982 to 2001. He has received numerous awards and honors for his research, including the American Chemical Society’s (ACS’s) Division of Analytical Chemistry Award in Electrochemistry (1988) and, most recently, ACS’s Priestley Medal (2002).
2005 DAC officers
PEOPLE
Allen J. Bard, electrochemist and professor at the University of Texas, Austin, received the 2004 Welch Award in Chemistry. The award, presented annually at the Welch Foundation Conference on Chemical Research in Houston, Texas, recognizes lifetime achievement in basic chemical research. Bard received a solid gold medallion and $300,000. Bard earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry at the City College of New York (1955) and his graduate (1956) and doctoral (1958) degrees at Harvard University. He joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 1958. Although Bard is most noted for his
COURTESY OF THE WELCH FOUNDATION
Allen J. Bard receives 2004 Welch Award
Christie G. Enke of the University of New Mexico is the new chair-elect of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Analytical Chemistry (DAC). Steven Petrovic of Southern Oregon University remains the secretary. Al Ribes of the Dow Chemical Co. is the treasurer, and John H. Callahan of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the 2004–2005 chair. Michelle Buchanan of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Catherine Fenselau of the University of Maryland, College Park; Alanah Fitch of Loyola University Chicago; and Roland Hirsh of the U.S. Department of Energy will serve as councillors. Karen B. Sentell of Ciba Vision Corp.; Sally Stafford of Hewlett Packard Co.; Henry Blount of the National Science Foundation; and Charles Wilkins of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, will serve as alternate councillors.
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