Publications by authors named "Leilani Astrab"

Fibroblast activation drives fibrotic diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis. However, the complex interplay of how tissue mechanics and macrophage signals combine to influence fibroblast activation is not well understood. Here, we use hyaluronic acid hydrogels as a tunable cell culture system to mimic lung tissue stiffness and viscoelasticity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrogels have gained significant popularity as model platforms to study reciprocal interactions between cells and their microenvironment. While hydrogel tools to probe many characteristics of the extracellular space have been developed, fabrication approaches remain challenging and time-consuming, limiting multiplexing or widespread adoption. Thus, we have developed a modular fabrication approach to generate distinct hydrogel microenvironments within the same 96-well plate for increased throughput of fabrication as well as integration with existing high-throughput assay technologies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrogels have gained significant popularity as model platforms to study the reciprocal interactions between cells and their microenvironment. While hydrogel tools to probe many characteristics of the extracellular space have been developed, fabrication approaches remain challenging and time-consuming, limiting multiplexing or widespread adoption. Thus, we have developed a modular fabrication approach to generate distinct hydrogel microenvironments within 96-well plates for increased throughput of fabrication as well as integration with existing high-throughput assay technologies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

. Chondroitinase ABC (ChABC) has emerged as a promising therapeutic agent for central nervous system regeneration. Despite multiple beneficial outcomes for regeneration, translation of this enzyme is challenged by poor pharmacokinetics, localization, and stability.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Ocular neovascularization is a hallmark of retinal diseases including neovascular age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, two leading causes of blindness in adults. Neovascularization is driven by the interaction of soluble vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) ligands with transmembrane VEGF receptors (VEGFR), and inhibition of the VEGF pathway has shown tremendous clinical promise. However, anti-VEGF therapies require invasive intravitreal injections at frequent intervals and high doses, and many patients show incomplete responses to current drugs due to the lack of sustained VEGF signaling suppression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_sessionojibfgrg3uk3mgt7ur5u8v10cu0nebsa): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once