Abstract
This chapter describes a protocol for forming open endothelial tubes in vitro and quantifying their permeability to macromolecules. These tubes consist of confluent monolayers of human microvascular endothelial cells in perfused microfluidic collagen gels. The cylindrical geometry of the tubes mimics the shape of microvessels in vivo; it allows simultaneous and/or repeated measurements of permeability coefficients and detection of focal leaks. We have used these in vitro models to test the effects of agonists on microvascular permeability and are developing arrays of microvascular tubes to enable large-scale testing.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Bingmei Fu for many helpful discussions. This work was supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (award EB005792).
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Price, G.M., Tien, J. (2011). Methods for Forming Human Microvascular Tubes In Vitro and Measuring Their Macromolecular Permeability. In: Khademhosseini, A., Suh, KY., Zourob, M. (eds) Biological Microarrays. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 671. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-551-0_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-551-0_17
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