INEB PUBLICATION SELECTED AS "HOT ARTICLE" IN INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY

The article "Sensory neurons and osteoblasts: close partners in a microfluidic platform" has been selected as an Integrative Biology HOT Article and has been made free to access for four weeks.  It has also been highlighted on the Integrative Biology blog at http://blogs.rsc.org/ib/ and promoted through our Twitter account at https://twitter.com/i_Biology_RSC.

The article is available since 17 of March 2014, and the authors are: Estrela Neto, Cecília J. Alves, Daniela M. Sousa, Inês S. Alencastre, Ana H. Lourenço, Luís Leitão, Hyun R. Ryu, Noo L. Jeon, Rui Fernandes, Paulo Aguiar, Ramiro D. Almeida and Meriem Lamghari

We presented a microfluidic-based coculture system as a new tool to be explored for modeling biological processes and pharmacological screening concerning peripheral tissues innervation. This work brings new insights on compartmentalized microfluidic devices showed, for the first time, to be an innovative tool to study sensory neurons and non-neuronal cells interactions, surpassing the limitations of the currently available systems. We explored this platform to perform explants cultures of sensory neurons and osteoblasts. Moreover we enriched the non-neuronal cells/axonal microenvironment for 2D/3D cocultures as a step forward to extracellular matrix interaction studies. We also improved the system’s readout by developing a computational application for quantify axonal growth within non-neuronal cells in these platforms. Overall we developed a tool for studies of the peripheral tissues innervation in physiological/pathological conditions which can be integrated in different fields such as drug delivery or tissue engineering approaches.

MORE INFO:
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2014/ib/c4ib00035h#!divAbstract