vascular health research centre

In pursuing its goal to understand how the vascular system responds to physiological and pathological changes, and subsequently to develop novel therapeutics, the Vascular Health Research Centre at DCU employs a range of unique experimentation technologies. These include a range of proprietary cell culturing technologies which allow one to simulate in vitro the complex, mechanically challenged, three-dimensional environment of a blood vessel, in addition to state-of-the-art gene array technology to examine differential gene expression in vascular cells under varying environmental conditions.

• CELLMAX® Artificial Capillary System
• Flexercell® Tension Plus™ System
• Flexercell® Compression Plus™ System
• FlexFlow® Shear Stress System
• Affymetrix Gene Array System

CELLMAX® Artificial Capillary System:

The Vascular Biology Research Group at DCU employs a unique CELLMAX® Artificial Capillary System (Spectrum Laboratories, Inc.) for the perfused transcapillary in vitro culture/co-culture of vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cells. Unlike conventional cell culture technologies, this system simulates the highly efficient, three-dimensional function of the human capillary system and, when used in conjunction with the CELLMAX® Quad (a proprietary positive pressure displacement pumping mechanism that permits long term culture in artificial capillary modules at precisely controlled flow rates), is particularly ideal for endothelial cell studies under conditions of defined hemodynamic shear stress. For further information, visit http://www.spectrapor.com/cellco/index.html.