Measuring the ability of compounds to cross various tissue barriers is of critical importance during drug development, as most drugs will have to cross at least one tissue barrier to reach their target. Various assays already exist to assess this process, but have shortcomings such as being prone to artefacts or failing to provide information on permeation pathway. Now Joachim Wegener and colleagues have devised a new silicon chip to visualise permeability, with the ability to see defects within the cell layer and details about the permeation route. Read more…
Macroporous silicon chips for laterally resolved, multi-parametric analysis of epithelial barrier function
Stefanie Michaelis, Christina E. Rommel, Jan Endell, Petra Göring, Ralf Wehrspohn, Claudia Steinem, Andreas Janshoff, Hans-Joachim Galla and Joachim Wegener
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC00026A
On a completely different topic the next HOT article is on acoustofluidics. Henrik Bruus et al present a simple method based on measuring light intensity to determine the acoustic energy density in microchannel. This parameter can be used as a measure of acoustophoretic performance, but is typically tricky to measure. Read how they achieved it:
Measuring acoustic energy density in microchannel acoustophoresis using a simple and rapid light-intensity method
Rune Barnkob, Ida Iranmanesh, Martin Wiklund and Henrik Bruus
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40120G
Remember – these articles are free (if you have an RSC Publishing account) for the next four weeks!
