Examining the Effect of Laminar Flow on Ex Vivo Pancreatic Islet Associated Endothelial Cells

• Main Author: Crocker, Alana
• Other Authors: Rocheleau, Jonathan
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Endothelial Cells; Microfluidic; 0541
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/25460

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.