PROJECT SUMMARY A number of hormones in the body follow periodic patterns, with concentrations cycling up and down every hour or so. These cyclic patterns are important for functions including growth, reproduction, glucose control, excitation, and rest. However, these dynamic processes are rarely reproduced in cell culture, meaning that we often study cells out of their natural environment. Thus, the biology that we observe in the laboratory can be incomplete or different from in our bodies. This severely handicaps our understanding of disease and our search for effective therapies. This project aims to build a cheap and easy to use cell culture device that reproduces the hormonal cycles present in our bodies. Furthermore, the system monitors the response of cells to these hormonal pulses, sampling rapidly to capture quickly changing behavior. The system is built to resemble a conventional cell culture plate, making it familiar to all biologists. However, inside the plate are hidden pumps, channels, and even simple computing circuits that allow culture media to be automatically cycled between different formulations, or sampled out into collection wells. If this project is successful, these affordable and simple to use tools will become broadly accessible to the biomedical community, transforming the study of a number of diseases as well as the search for cures.

NARRATIVE Understanding how hormones are regulated is crucial for advancing the treatment of endocrine diseases. Many hormones are released in pulses, rather than continuously, but reproducing this pulsatile environment in the lab is challenging. This project will develop a microfluidic platform that can mimic the natural pulsatile secretion of hormones, allowing scientists to study their regulation and develop new therapies.