Santona Pal

Synthetic peptide-acrylate surfaces for long-term self-renewal and cardiomyocyte differentiation of human embryonic stem cells

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have two properties of interest for the development of cell therapies: self-renewal and the potential to differentiate into all major lineages of somatic cells in the human body. Widespread clinical application of hESC-derived cells will require culture methods that are low-cost, robust, scalable and use chemically defined raw materials. Here we describe synthetic peptide-acrylate surfaces (PAS) that support self-renewal of hESCs in chemically defined, xeno-free medium. H1 and H7 hESCs were successfully maintained on PAS for over ten passages. Cell morphology and phenotypic marker expression were similar for cells cultured on PAS or Matrigel. Cells on PAS retained normal karyotype and pluripotency and were able to differentiate to functional cardiomyocytes on PAS. Finally, PAS were scaled up to large culture-vessel formats. Synthetic, xeno-free, scalable surfaces that support the self-renewal and differentiation of hESCs will be useful for both research purposes and development of cell therapies.

Rare earth-doped glass microbarcodes

The development of ultraminiaturized identification tags has applications in fields ranging from advanced biotechnology to security. This paper describes micrometer-sized glass barcodes containing a pattern of different fluorescent materials that are easily identified by using a UV lamp and an optical microscope. A model DNA hybridization assay using these “microbarcodes” is described. Rare earth-doped glasses were chosen because of their narrow emission bands, high quantum efficiencies, noninterference with common fluorescent labels, and inertness to most organic and aqueous solvents. These properties and the large number (>1 million) of possible combinations of these microbarcodes make them attractive for use in multiplexed bioassays and general encoding.

Novel Surface Technologies for Genomics, Proteomics, and Drug Discovery

Following the recent progress in functional genomics and proteomics, and high-throughput screening (HTS) in drug discovery, evolving technologies over the last decade have offered a tremendous leap over the caveats of traditional techniques. In response to this metamorphosis of technologies through different platforms, Corning has introduced a suite of surface technologies with applications in microarray printing, enhanced attachment, and consumables in drug discovery. Microarrays generated on an ultra-flat glass substrate with GAPS coating exhibiting a robust chemistry and low surface background have led to higher sensitivity and reproducibility for the expression assay. Recent introduction of UltraGAPS™ surface enables oligo attachment for use in differential gene expression analysis. Various attachment surfaces to meet the needs of the applications in genomics, proteomics and drug discovery will be discussed.