The effects of cell culture parameters on cell release kinetics from thermoresponsive surfaces.

The thermoresponsive properties of poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) (pNIPAM) have led to its wide use in bioengineering applications, including the reversible adhesion of mammalian cells. The groups performing this research have used different solutions to initiate cell release and have varied the temperature of the solution during detachment. To our knowledge, there has been no direct correlation between the solution identity or temperature on the efficiency of cell release from pNIPAM films. In this work, we present a study of the effect of the solution type and temperature used to initiate detachment on the time required to achieve 100% detachment of bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAECs) from pNIPAM. The pNIPAM films used in this work were obtained using a novel technique using a spin-coated solution containing pNIPAM (spNIPAM). We found that the fastest, most reliable release of cells occurred below the LCST of the polymer at 4 degrees C in serum free media (SFM). As it is sometimes desirable to stop cell metabolism at the time of detachment (e.g., to "freeze" protein expression prior to subsequent analysis), the use of extremely cold SFM would be ideal in such cases.

Exponential intravenous infusions in toxicological studies: achieving identical serum drug concentration profiles in individuals with altered pharmacokinetic states.

It is common practice in the clinical setting to adjust the dosage of a drug administered to a patient with altered pharmacokinetic characteristics, e.g., renal impairment, in such a way that the steady-state level of the drug is the same as that which would be observed in normal patients. This may also be done in experimental studies of the interaction of drug toxicity and a disease state. Dosage adjustment does alter average steady-state serum concentrations but the resulting concentration-time profiles of the normal and the diseased groups will be of entirely different shapes due to differences in elimination. In a toxicological study, this would lead to a confounding of the disease state and the difference in exposure. In this paper, model-independent deconvolution analysis is applied to derive the infusion schedule needed to achieve a constant serum concentration followed by a predetermined monoexponential decline in concentration. The resulting exponential infusion is applied to attain identical serum gentamicin concentration-time profiles in five pairs of subtotally nephrectomized and normal dogs during a 12-h infusion.