Omolara Olujimi Baiyegunhi (Ph.D.) is a Wellcome Trust early career fellow and research associate at the Africa Health Research Institute, Durban, South Africa. She was a SANTHE post-doc fellow from October 2018 to January 2023, and also an honorary research fellow at University College London (UCL), UK, between 2020 and 2021. She received her Ph.D. in immunology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2018. In her current research, she aims to identify the virological and metabolic factors that influence the development and persistence of HIV-1 reservoirs. Omolara is passionate about excellence in scientific research and the training of the next generation of scientists. Long-term, she wants to develop therapeutics and vaccines to improve the health of communities with high-disease burdens, such as HIV-1 infection. She has presented at numerous conferences and co-authored several publications.

HIV persistence in tissue sites despite antiretroviral therapy (ART) is a major barrier to HIV cure. The very early initiation of ART can lead to prolonged remission when treatment is interrupted but this is an infrequent occurrence. In most individuals, virus rebound occurs within weeks to months even in individuals initiated on ART during Fiebig stage I (hyperacute) HIV infection despite rapid suppression of viremia and dramatically lower numbers of latently infected cells in peripheral blood. The underlying immunological and virologic mechanisms responsible for the diverse viral rebound kinetics remain unknown. Dr. Baiyegunhi’s research seeks to understand the mechanisms underlying HIV reservoir persistence during ART to inform HIV eradication/cure strategies. In this talk, Dr. Baiyegunhi will present on HIV antigen persistence in lymph nodes following ART initiation in Fiebig stage I and provide insights into the immune mechanisms impacting HIV persistence and clearance in tissue sanctuary sites.

In this webinar, Dr. Baiyegunhi will help us:

• Understand the impact of the timing of antiretroviral therapy initiation on T follicular helper cell responses in HIV patients.
• Explore the persistence of HIV antigens in lymph nodes and its implications for disease progression.
• Examine the role of HIV-specific CD8 T cells in clearing antigens from lymph node tissue sanctuary sites and its potential therapeutic significance.

Dr. Natanael Zarco, a Research Associate at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, USA, specializes in brain tumor studies, particularly glioblastoma (GBM) biology. With a strong academic background, he holds a B.Sc. in Chemical Pharmaceutical Biology from UABJO, Mexico, and earned his MSc and Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology at CINVESTAV, Mexico City.

Currently, Dr. Zarco’s research is focused on exploring the interaction of GBM with the subventricular zone (SVZ), a significant neurogenic niche that houses Neural Stem Cells (NSCs). His study delves into how glioblastoma stem cells invade the SVZ and other brain regions. In his talk, he will discuss the importance of cell migration in the spread of cancer cells throughout the brain and how developing more physiological models can aid in understanding the regulation of this process, ultimately leading to the design of novel therapeutic agents.

In this webinar, Dr. Zarco will:

• Summarize the characteristics of brain tumors with a particular focus on glioblastoma.
• Explain the importance of cell migration in cancer progression and prognosis.
• Examine the need to develop experimental tumor models to study cancer cell migration.

Dr. Fytianos completed his PhD in Biology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. During his PhD, he investigated nanoparticle interactions with human immune cells and advanced in vitro models for respiratory diseases. Afterwards, he pursued postdoctoral research in biomedicine and translational medicine, with a focus on respiratory disease models (in vitro and in vivo). Since 2019, he has worked for CSL Behring R&D department as a Senior Scientist. He currently leads several projects in the respiratory therapeutic area that are at a preclinical stage. His team focuses on relevant and physiological in vitro and ex vivo experimental disease models that could support later stages of development.

In this webinar, Dr. Fytianos will:

• Discuss the characterization of heme-induced injury on PCLS
• Explain methods optimization in producing high-quality PCLS
• Discuss clinical and research translatability of PCLS

Anne van der Does, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pulmonology at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. Her work is focused on (dysfunctional) lung epithelial biology in chronic lung diseases, with specific focus on developing advanced lung epithelial cell cultures to support that research. Related to this focus, dr. van der Does was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship twice, of which the second included a one-year visit at Emulate Inc. -a pioneer company in Organs-on-Chips technology- to use their Lung-on-Chip platform. Dr. van der Does has published in peer-review journals including the European Respiratory Journal.

Dr. van der Does received her Ph.D. from the Department of Infectious Diseases at the LUMC before completing a 4-year postdoc at the Karolinska Institutet, in Stockholm, Sweden after which she continued her career in the PulmoScience Lab of the LUMC (www.pulmosciencelableiden.com).

In this webinar Dr. van der Does will:

• Discuss how application of stretch and airflow affects mucociliary clearance in a primary Airway Lung-on-Chip
• How the vibrating microtome is used to slice the chips for imaging purposes
• Shortly touch upon new research into COVID-19-related lung fibrosis featuring PCLS and Organ-on-Chip technology

Dr. Zhao-Wen Wang is a professor in the Department of Neuroscience at University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Dr. Wang’s lab studies chemical and electrical synapses using the nematode C. elegans as a model. A research focus of Dr. Wang’s lab is to identify previously unknown regulators of the BK channel using a forward genetics approach. His lab has identified several proteins that are required for BK channel function in vivo. Following a recent discovery of a BK channel regulator in C. elegans by Dr. Wang lab, they have moved to exploring whether the regulatory mechanism is conserved in mammals using a variety of approaches, including electrophysiological analyses with mouse brain slices.

In this webinar, Dr. Wang will:

• Discus how melatonin regulates neurotransmitter release and sleep behavior by activating Slo1 (the BK channel) in C. elegans
• Explain how melatonin may activate mammalian Slo1 in a heterologous expression system through a specific melatonin receptor, MT1
• Define how MT1 physically interacts with Slo1
• Examine how knockout of MT1 enhances neuronal excitability in SCN neurons

The studies of Dr. Andreacarola Urso have largely focused on different phases of lung disease, including respiratory disease progression, transplantation and graft rejection. Currently, Dr. Urso’s chief area of interest is immunometabolism in the context of bacterial pneumonias in cystic fibrosis, which also eventually leads to lung transplantation. Pharmacological testing as well as mechanical responses are challenging to study in the human lung. Dr. Urso will talk about how the use of precision-cut lung slices (PCLS) has facilitated her studies on airway contractility and pharmacological delivery.

In this webinar, Dr. Urso will:

Dr. Francesco Travascio is an Associate Professor at the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of the University of Miami, where he directs the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Laboratory. He is also Associate Director of the Max Biedermann Institute for Biomechanics at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach. He received is B.S. and M.S. in Materials Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) in 2001, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2004. He also holds a doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering (University of Miami, 2009). Before his academic appointment at the University of Miami, he worked for two years as a bioengineer at MAKO Surgical, Inc. (now MAKO Stryker, Inc.). His expertise is in the areas of occupational and sports biomechanics, as well as orthopedics.

The meniscus is a fibrocartilaginous tissue in the knee that plays an essential role in load distribution, congruency, and joint stability. Accordingly, the presence of a healthy and functioning meniscus is necessary for proper joint biomechanics. Traumatic failures, such as meniscal tears are the most frequent type of injury to the meniscus, especially in active younger adults. Repair of tears via surgical suturing decreases the development of osteoarthritis and subsequent need for joint replacement, but its rate of success is limited. The ultimate goal of Dr. Travascio’s research is to develop a long-lasting treatment for meniscus tears based on regeneration of the tissue and preservation of its function. He believes that a scaffold closely mimicking structure and composition, as well as biomechanical and biotransport properties of a healthy native tissue will integrate into the meniscus and will regenerate meniscal tissue at the defect. Unfortunately, to date, little investigation has been conducted on biomechanics and biotransport in meniscus. In this talk, Dr. Travascio will present his research advances in understanding the biomechanical behavior of the meniscus and its transport properties in relation to its unique compositional and structural features.

In this webinar, Dr. Travascio will:

• Describe the key functions, structures and composition of the meniscus in the knee
• Explain experimental methods for characterizing tissue transport and mechanical properties for the meniscus

Dr. Greta Vargova grew up in Slovakia where she pursued her undergraduate studies in molecular biology and PhD in neuroscience. In her doctoral research at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dr. Vargova co-developed, applied and characterized several types of adeno-associated viral vectors expressing human truncated tau and red fluorophore mCherry in equal ratio.

These AAV vectors were developed to induce Alzheimer’s disease-like pathology in wildtype mice. She performed two-photon calcium imaging in awake mice to investigate the effects of developing neurodegeneration on cortical circuits. Dr. Vargova also had the opportunity to participate in long-term research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where she studied the role of cortical feedback projections in sensory perception.

Currently, Dr. Vargova is a third year postdoctoral researcher at UCR Riverside in the laboratory of Professor Hongdian Yang. She studies somatosensory perception and cognitive flexibility, for which they have developed a novel, tactile based rule-shift behavioral assay.

For this webinar, she is going to present their most recent publication, in which they show the link between locus coeruleus activity and behavioral flexibility.

Dr. Junshi Wang is an enthusiastic neuroscientist who has been investigating neural mechanisms underlying drug addiction for 14 years. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience from Arizona State University, where he was mentored by Drs. Ron Hammer and Ella Nikulina. While there, he used behavioral models and immunohistochemistry to comprehensively investigate how brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) signaling in the brain reward circuit regulates stress-exacerbated addictive behaviors. In his first postdoc training period (2014-2020), in Dr. Yan Dong’s lab at the University of Pittsburgh, he learned electrophysiology. Since then, he has been using electrophysiology to study neuroplasticity in addiction. Currently he is a postdoc in Dr. Paul Kenny’s lab, at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Wang enjoys making modifications to procedures and instruments to gain better control at each experimental step, ultimately leading to better-quality data.

In this webinar, Dr. Wang will:

• Discuss to quantify nascent silent synapses using electrophysiology
• Explore how to perform ex vivo calcium imaging on brain slices
• Share tips & tricks of brain sectioning to help reduce frustration for electrophysiology recordings

Chen-Yuan Dong completed his PhD in physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1998. After completing postdoctoral training at MIT as an NIH postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Dong joined the Department of Physic at National Taiwan University where he is now a Distinguished Professor of Physics. He specializes in the development and applications of optical microscopy for biological and biomedical research. Dr. Dong is a Fellow of both Optica (formerly Optical Society of America) and the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). He also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biomedical Optics.

In this webinar, Dr. Dong will:

• Discuss how cancer treatment decisions are made largely based on clinical guidelines
• Explain how tumor slice organoids are a promising approach for delivering precise cancer therapy through biomarker search and phenotypic cancer drug susceptibility testing
• Explore how rapid processing of tumor specimen into sliced organoids is important in preserving morphological and molecular fidelity

Dr. Fordahl will highlight how proinflammatory cytokines alter dopamine terminal function, and how increasing dietary fat intake may enhance microglial activity. The Fordahl Lab’s primary research interests are to examine how the excessive intake of high fat or high sugar foods alter brain function, leading to dysregulated food intake. They are interested in how prolonged consumption of a palatable diet degrades the perception of natural rewards by altering dopamine signaling in response to food. Their lab pairs a pre-clinical rodent model of obesity with electrochemistry, immunochemistry, and other biological endpoints with behavioral markers of dopamine system function.

In this webinar, Dr. Fordahl will:

• Demonstrate our lab’s use of the Compresstome in electrochemistry experiments.
• Outline how a dietary saturated fat alters dopamine kinetics.
• Identify the role of inflammation and inflammatory response cells in this process.

In his PhD in Molecular Biology, working with Ben Hankamer at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, Dr. Maurizio Chioccioli led a large-scale, high-throughput analysis to develop next generation microalgae systems for commercial (biofuels) applications. This work ignited his passion for quantitative imaging of dynamical systems, which he then pursued in a short postdoc at University of Cambridge, UK in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics under Ray Goldstein. While there, Dr. Chioccioli invented a novel live video-microscopy platform and worked closely with mathematicians and physicists to study dynamic flagella beating and trajectory of single-cell C. reinhardtii. Turning to the biomedical field, in the lab of Pietro Cicuta at the Cavendish Laboratory at University of Cambridge, he applied these same modeling principles capture dynamic ciliary beating via high-speed video-microscopy. He co-invented new quantitative approaches to assess drug efficacy in Cystic Fibrosis patients and to characterize and potentially diagnose different variants of Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia. Dr. Chioccioli was recruited to Yale School of Medicine in 2018, where he is now Instructor under the mentorship of Naftali Kaminski in the Section for Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine. His appointment has provided him the intellectual freedom and independence to pursue research interests in alveolar injury and regeneration and specifically the role of AT2 cells in these processes. In his most significant body of work to date, he led a study to define the dynamic spatiotemporal coordination of alveolar stem cells in response to injury and discovered motility of these cells as a new cellular mechanism through which the alveolar injury response is coordinated.

In this webinar, Dr. Chioccioli will:

• Describe motility of alveolar stem cells as a new injury response mechanism in the lung and reveal properties of stem cell motility at high cellular resolution
• Explain early highly dynamic behavior of AT2 cells post injury, including migration within and between alveoli
• Characterize the emergence of at least three distinct morphokinetic AT2 cell states associated with AT2 stem cell injury response
• Show how small molecule-based inhibition of Rho-associated protein kinase (ROCK) pathway significantly reduced motility of AT2 stem cells following injury and reduced expression of Krt8, a known marker of intermediate progenitor cells

Claudia Loebel, M.D./Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Materials Science & Engineering and a Biological Sciences Scholar at the University of Michigan, US. She obtained her MD (2011) at the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany and PhD (2016) at ETH Zurich (Switzerland), before completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Professor Jason Burdick at the University of Pennsylvania. She was awarded the Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) through the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH for her work on synthetic lung tissue models to probe mechanisms of alveolar epithelial cell dysfunction. Her research involves the development of PCLS to probe mechanisms of early epithelial cell differentiation during lung injury and fibrosis.

In this webinar, Dr. Loebel will:

• Describe the technical development of PCLS with a focus on epithelial cells
• Explain the necessary culture conditions for optimal PCLS in pulmonary fibrosis research
• Discuss the imaging and quantification of PCLS metrics in pulmonary fibrosis

Professor Koziol-White received her graduate degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison in Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology examining mechanisms of eosinophil survival and activation in allergic asthma. Her first postdoctoral fellowship was with Angela Haczku (Hasku) at University of Pennsylvania studying ozone and allergen-induced mechanisms of dendritic cell activation in the lung. Her second postdoc was with Reynold Panettieri Jr. at University of Pennsylvania, where she has been examining airway physiology and modulation of airway smooth muscle function in asthma and other respiratory disorders.

Dr. Koziol-White has published 59 peer-reviewed journal articles, 5 book chapters, and mentored ~35 students at various stages of their career. Here, her webinar will showcase the versatility of the precision cut lung slice system that she has developed and utilized to study airway function for almost two decades.

In this webinar, Dr. Koziol-White will discuss:

• How the laboratory generates precision cut lung slices utilizing the VF-300 vibratome
• How to measure airway lumen changes to assess airway constriction and relaxation
• How allergen exposure/mast cell activation elicits airway contraction
• How pathogen, toxicant, and inflammatory mediator exposure change airway tone

Dr. Joseph Ransdell completed his undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota. He then completed his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri Columbia and studied the regulation of membrane excitability in crab motor neurons. After receiving his Ph.D., he joined the lab of Jeanne Nerbonne at Washington University. There, he continued using electrophysiological methods to test how ion channel accessory proteins regulate the excitability of various types of mouse central neurons. In 2020, Dr. Ransdell started his independent lab at Miami University in Oxford, OH. He continues to work with mouse models and his team has centered their focus on the regulation of voltage-gated sodium channels and the contributions of the channels to the functioning of cerebellar circuits during health and disease.

In this webinar, Dr. Ransdell explores how the Compresstome vibrating microtome is used to produce healthy brain slices for electrophysiology. He studies adult Purkinje neurons in mouse cerebellar brain slices.

Dr. Tsilingiri was born and raised in Athens, Greece. She studied Biochemistry and Biotechnology in Thessaly and then completed research training in Spain, Italy and Scotland. Her main expertise is on basic immunology and aspects of the interplay between nutrition and the immune system. She has extensive experience in explant slice cultures.

Currently, she is working on tumor immunotherapy and using the Compresstome vibrating microtome to examine the interaction between tumor tissues and autologous lymph node cells in slice cultures. This work is being carried out in the frame of an EU-funded Consortium, Tumour-LNoC (Tumour-Lymph node on a chip), with the ultimate goal of mimicking the metastatic process on a chip and monitor metastasizing cells in real time.

In this webinar, Dr. Tsilingiri explores how she uses the Compresstome vibrating microtome to make healthy tumor slices in her research of lung cancer.

Terence Tsz Wai Wong received his B.Eng. and M.Phil. degrees both from the University of Hong Kong in 2011 and 2013, respectively. He studied Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) and Medical Engineering at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), under the tutelage of Prof. Lihong V. Wang (member of the National Academy of Engineering and Inventors) for his Ph.D. degree. Right after his Ph.D. graduation, he joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (CBE). He is also the Director of the HKUST Research Center for Medical Imaging and Analysis (CMIA). With the integration of optical/photoacoustic imaging and deep-learning algorithms, his research focuses on developing smart optical and photoacoustic devices to enable label-free and high-speed histological imaging, three-dimensional whole-organ imaging, and low-cost cancer-targeting deep-tissue imaging. He is an author or co-author of over 50 publications in top peer-reviewed journals (including Nature Photonics, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Advanced Science, etc), conference papers, and book chapters, and has five U.S. patents.

In this webinar, Dr. Wong shares how he built a custom-made Compresstome® for high-speed histological 3D imaging of whole organs like brains.

Dr Astero Klampatsa (PhD) is a Team Leader in Cancer Immunotherapy at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK and a Senior Lecturer in King’s College London, UK. She was awarded a PhD in Research Oncology (focused in mesothelioma apoptotic and hypoxia pathways) from Queen Mary’s College, University of London, UK. As a postdoctoral fellow, she gained expertise in CAR T cell immunotherapy and immunobiology of thoracic cancers at King’s College London, UK, and at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Since 2019, Dr Klampatsa has been leading her own team, the Thoracic Oncology Immunotherapy Group, focusing on developing novel CAR T cell therapies for mesothelioma and lung cancer, as well as the immunobiology of these malignancies for identification of markers of response to immunotherapy.

In this webinar, Dr. Klampatsa will discuss how the Compresstome® was used to create precision-cut tumor slices (PCTS) as an ex vivo model for immunotherapy research.

Have you wondered how one mouse brain may be used for multiple experiments? Come discover the strategy behind using animal tissues for multi-use research experiments, so that your tissue samples can go further.

Dr. Yiying Zhang from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital is our guest webinar speaker.

Dr. Yiying Zhang has been studying neuropathogenesis, anesthesia neurotoxicity, anesthesia/surgery toxicity, postoperative neurocognitive disorder and postoperative delirium (POD) in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) since 2009. Specifically, she has studied the effects of anesthetics on mitochondrial function in vitro and in vivo, as well as the potential association between neuroinflammation and mitochondrial function following the anesthesia and/or surgery. Recently, Dr. Zhang has focused on studying potential gut microbiota-neuroinflammation-mitochondria cascade in the pathogenesis of POD. For this Precisionary webinar, Dr. Zhang will discuss a “3D” use of animal tissues in planning experimental designs in academic research.

Have you wondered about how to make precision-cut tissue slices and their experimental applications? Precisionary Instruments has worked with Visikol, a contract research services company focused on leveraging advanced imaging, 3D cell culture assays and digital pathology to accelerate the drug discovery and development process.

In this webinar, Visikol experts explain the need for in vitro liver models to study livery injury. Our guest speakers demonstrate the standard assay format for creating precision-cut liver slices (PCLS), explain how the Compresstome® VF-310-0Z vibrating microtome helps create uniform tissue slices that can be meaningfully compared between treatments, go through how to use the Compresstome® step-by-step for making PCLS, and discuss how slices are made from normal human liver tissue, diseased human liver tissue, and mouse model liver.

Dr. Henderson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. He received a BS (with distinction) in Chemistry at The Ohio State University, where he started research, initially as an Analytical Chemist in the lab of Dr. John Olesik. He went on to receive his PhD in Pharmacology at The Ohio State University in the lab of Dr. Dennis McKay. Afterwards, his professional journey continued his development as a NIDA-NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology in the lab of Dr. Henry Lester. Before starting his faculty position at Marshall University, Dr. Henderson also trained as a visiting postdoctoral fellow at Yale University (under Dr Nii Addy and Dr. Marina Picciotto).

In addition to his responsibilities at Marshall University, Dr. Henderson is now one of two co-Chairs for the Basic Science Network in the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (www.SRNT.org).

The Henderson lab focuses on the role tobacco and vaping flavors play in addiction-related behaviors. Thus far, we have shown that menthol and green apple flavors can enhance nicotine vapor self-administration and do so by directly altering dopamine neurons in the midbrain.

Jonathan T. Ting is an Assistant Investigator at the Allen Institute, where he joined in 2013 to provide electrophysiology expertise for the Human Cell Types program, and to develop functional assays on human ex vivo brain slides. Dr. Ting has more than 15 years of experience in patch clamp electrophysiology. He studied the neural circuitry basis of psychiatric disorders during his postdoctoral fellowships at Duke University and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and he developed and characterized several transgenic mouse lines now widely employed for nervous system research involving optogenetics.

For this webinar, Dr. Ting provides reflections of his experience on a decade of patching adult brain slices. He will:

• Discuss which key steps in the brain slice process is most important and why
• Challenge our conventional beliefs of slicing solutions and methodologies
• Recommend tips and tricks based on his experience and research