Reversible Mechanical Contraception and Endometriosis Treatment Using Stimuli-Responsive Hydrogels.

Female sterilization via fallopian tube ligation is a common procedure; However, after the operation, over 10% of women seek re-fertilization, which is frequently unsuccessful. In addition, there is evidence that fallopian tubes contribute to the spread of endometriotic tissue as they serve as channels for proinflammatory media entering the abdominal cavity via retrograde menstruation. Here, stimuli-degradable hydrogel implants are presented for the functional, biocompatible, and reversible occlusion of fallopian tubes. The hydrogel implants, designed with customized swelling properties, mechanically occlude fallopian tubes in a high-performance manner with burst pressures reaching 255-558 mmHg, exceeding normal abdominal pressures (95 mmHg). Their damage-free removal can be achieved within 30 min using near-visible UV light or a glutathione solution, employing a method akin to standard fallopian tube perfusion diagnostics. Ultrasound-guided implant placement is demonstrated using a clinical hysteroscope in a human-scale uterus model and biocompatibility in a porcine in vivo model. Importantly, the prevention of live sperm as well as endometrial cell passage through blocked fallopian tubes is demonstrated. Overall, a multifunctional system is presented that constitutes a possible means of on-demand, reversible contraception along with the first-ever mechanical approach to abdominal endometriosis prevention and treatment.

ePlatypus: an ecosystem for computational analysis of immunogenomics data.

MOTIVATION: The maturation of systems immunology methodologies requires novel and transparent computational frameworks capable of integrating diverse data modalities in a reproducible manner. RESULTS: Here, we present the ePlatypus computational immunology ecosystem for immunogenomics data analysis, with a focus on adaptive immune repertoires and single-cell sequencing. ePlatypus is an open-source web-based platform and provides programming tutorials and an integrative database that helps elucidate signatures of B and T cell clonal selection. Furthermore, the ecosystem links novel and established bioinformatics pipelines relevant for single-cell immune repertoires and other aspects of computational immunology such as predicting ligand-receptor interactions, structural modeling, simulations, machine learning, graph theory, pseudotime, spatial transcriptomics, and phylogenetics. The ePlatypus ecosystem helps extract deeper insight in computational immunology and immunogenomics and promote open science. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Platypus code used in this manuscript can be found at github.com/alexyermanos/Platypus.

On-chip technology for single-cell arraying, electrorotation-based analysis and selective release.

This paper reports a method for label-free single-cell biophysical analysis of multiple cells trapped in suspension by electrokinetic forces. Tri-dimensional pillar electrodes arranged along the width of a microfluidic chamber define actuators for single cell trapping and selective release by electrokinetic force. Moreover, a rotation can be induced on the cell in combination with a negative DEP force to retain the cell against the flow. The measurement of the rotation speed of the cell as a function of the electric field frequency define an electrorotation spectrum that allows to study the dielectric properties of the cell. The system presented here shows for the first time the simultaneous electrorotation analysis of multiple single cells in separate micro cages that can be selectively addressed to trap and/or release the cells. Chips with 39 micro-actuators of different interelectrode distance were fabricated to study cells with different sizes. The extracted dielectric properties of Henrietta Lacks, human embryonic kidney 293, and human immortalized T lymphocytes cells were found in agreements with previous findings. Moreover, the membrane capacitance of M17 neuroblastoma cells was investigated and found to fall in in the range of 7.49 ± 0.39 mF/m2 .

Detecting particles flowing through interdigitated 3D microelectrodes.

Counting cells in a large microchannel remains challenging and is particularly critical for in vitro assays, such as cell adhesion assays. This paper addresses this issue, by presenting the development of interdigitated three-dimensional electrodes, which are fabricated around passivated pillarshaped silicon microstructures, to detect particles in a flow. The arrays of micropillars occupy the entire channel height and detect the passage of the particle through their gaps by monitoring changes in the electrical resistance. Impedance measurements were employed in order to characterize the electrical equivalent model of the system and to detect the passage of particles in real-time. Three different geometrical micropillar configurations were evaluated and numerical simulations that supported the experimental activity were used to characterize the sensitive volume in the channel. Moreover, the signal-to-noise-ratio related to the passage of a single particle through an array was plotted as a function of the dimension and number of micropillars.