The chambers are surrounded with cameras that point at each blood-infused hydrogel patch. Janson/Rice University)įor feeding tests, as many as six of the hydrogels can be placed in a transparent plastic box about the size of a volleyball. Bioengineers from Rice University teamed up with tropical medicine experts from Tulane University to create a high-tech tool for studying the feeding behavior of mosquitoes that uses (top) blood-infused hydrogels from a 3D bioprinter as synthetic skin, and (bottom) automated cameras and machine-learning software to speed the collocation and processing of data. adviser Omid Veiseh, used bioprinting techniques that were pioneered in the lab of former Rice professor Jordan Miller. To create the stand-ins for skin, Rice’s team, which included Janson and his Ph.D. Each patch of gelatin-like hydrogel comes complete with tiny passageways that can be filled with flowing blood. To eliminate the need for live volunteers, their system uses patches of synthetic skin made with a 3D printer. So he and his co-authors found a way to automate the collection and processing of that data using inexpensive cameras and machine-learning software. (Photo by Brandon Martin/Rice University) Live subject testing can be expensive, and Janson said the “data can take many hours to process.” Rice bioengineers Kevin Janson (left) and Omid Veiseh with a sample of “synthetic skin” - hydrogel constructs 3D-printed with passageways for flowing blood - like the ones used in a new device they created with tropical medicine experts at Tulane University to study the feeding behavior of mosquitoes. “Many mosquito experiments still rely on human volunteers and animal subjects,” said Kevin Janson, a Rice bioengineering graduate student and lead co-author of a study about the research published this week in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.
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