Cardiovascular Drug Screening Tool
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| Cellix's solution enables continuous whole blood flow to be monitored in real-time. The advantages of the Cellix platform and biochips are that only microlitre volumes of whole blood are required for studies combined with live-cell imaging of whole blood interactions with endothelial cells. Cellix have validated this technology in the following areas: Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Stents. |
Atherosclerosis: Adhesion molecules, chemokines and oxidative stress in atherosclerosisWe investigated the role of different stimuli recognized to play an important part in atherosclerosis development (chemokines, cytokines, oxidized lipoproteins) on leukocyte adhesion to endothelial cells or purified adhesion molecules, under physiological flow conditions using Cellix’s VenaFluxTM platform and biochips. The main focus was on leukocyte adhesion to Fractalkine or VCAM-1, triggered by cytokines like TNFα or IFNγ, and by chemokines such as MCP-1. Inhibition profiles were also generated, blocking the specific binding to VCAM-1 using an anti-α4 mAb on THP1 monocytic cell line, or interfering on the binding between fractalkine and its receptor CX3CR1 on PBMCs with the soluble form of the chemokine. OxLDL has also been shown to upregulate the expression of adhesion molecules, as assessed through flow cytometric analysis, resulting in an increased adhesion of monocytes to endothelial cells under flow conditions. |
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Rolling of THP1 monocytes subjected to 0.5 dyne/cm² on E-selectin |
Stents: Drug-eluting stents inhibiting platelet adhesion and thrombus formationPolymers are attractive materials for both biomedical engineering and cardiovascular applications. Cellix optimized a microfluidic set-up to study the interaction of whole blood incubated with the time released drugs from the different co-polymer combinations (microgel and matrix). Treated whole blood was subjected to flow over microfluidic biochips coated with fibrinogen to provide varying adhesion profiles for each drug-eluting stent polymer. |
Whole blood subjected to 8 & 32 dyne cm² on Fibrinogen |
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Whole blood subjected to 60 dyne cm² on Collagen |