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Full-Text Articles in Biomaterials

Design, Construction And Application Of A Home-Built, Two-Photon Microscope, William P. Breeding Aug 2019

Design, Construction And Application Of A Home-Built, Two-Photon Microscope, William P. Breeding

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two-photon microscopy (TPM) is a powerful, versatile imaging modality for the study of biological systems. This thesis overviews the relevant physics involved in TPM, design considerations and process of constructing a home-built, two-photon microscope, and provides a set of procedures to operate the system. Furthermore, this work explores several applications of TPM through the study of single-cell metabolism and imaging the cellular-material interface. Explored in particular depth was the imaging of cellulose nanofiber (CNF) materials, with the goal of understanding the three-dimensional nature of fibroblast cell growth when embedded within the materials. This work uncovered several optical properties of CNF, …


Evaluation Of Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells In Blood Vessel Mimics Through Changes In Gene Expression And Caspase Activity, Conor Charles Hedigan Jun 2019

Evaluation Of Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells In Blood Vessel Mimics Through Changes In Gene Expression And Caspase Activity, Conor Charles Hedigan

Master's Theses

Blood vessel mimics (BVMs) are simple tissue engineered blood vessel constructs intended for preclinical testing of vascular devices. This thesis developed and implemented methods to characterize two of these components. The first aim of this thesis investigated the effect of cell culture duration and flow conditions on endothelial cell gene expression, especially regarding endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EndMT). A trend of decreased endothelial marker gene expression and increased mesenchymal marker gene expression would indicate EndMT. qPCR analysis revealed that increased cell culture duration did not result in EndMT, and in fact increased endothelial marker expression as cell culture duration increased. Disturbed flow …


Tissue Equivalent Gellan Gum Gel Materials For Clinical Mri And Radiation Dosimetry, Pawel Brzozowski Apr 2019

Tissue Equivalent Gellan Gum Gel Materials For Clinical Mri And Radiation Dosimetry, Pawel Brzozowski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Hydrogels contain high amount of water allowing their use as surrogates to human tissues with specific properties that can be tuned by additives. Gellan gum is a gel-forming material of interest and is a replacement for other common gelling agent with limited use as a tissue phantom. Therefore, this thesis examines the application of gellan gum gels as a novel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) phantom with a design of experiments model to obtain tunable properties. The analysis was extended to include mechanical and electrical properties with a separate design of experiment. Gels doped with synthesized superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) …