Endothelial cells represent an important barrier between the intravascular compartment and extravascular tissues, and therefore serve as key sensors, communicators, and amplifiers of danger signals in innate immunity and inflammation. Double stranded DNA (dsDNA) released from damaged host cells during injury or introduced by pathogens during infection, has emerged as a potent danger signal. Whi...

The microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) area has been developed extensively during the past three decades. In the 1970s, with the advancement of semiconductor microelectronics processing, researchers investigated wet anisotropic chemical etching processes for forming three dimensional silicon geometries. In the 1980s, researchers adopted the Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) process to realize ...

Disruption of lipid and carbohydrate homeostasis is an important factor in the development of prevalent metabolic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and atherosclerosis. Therefore, small molecules that could reduce insulin dependence and regulate dyslipidemia could have a dramatic effect on public health. The grapefruit flavonoid naringenin has been shown to normalize lipids in diabetes and hy...

In this work we have developed and characterized a novel fabrication process for producing dense, porous array of silica particles packed inside a plastic microfluidic channel. The novel approach relies on in-situ crystallization of colloidal silica particles within specific regions of a microchannel defined by plasma processing. These selfassembled silica colloids through a plastic microchanne...

Advancements in lab-on-a-chip technology promise to revolutionize both research and medicine through lower costs, better sensitivity, portability, and higher throughput. The incorporation of biological components onto biological microelectromechanical systems (bioMEMS) has shown great potential for achieving these goals. Microfabricated electronic chips allow for micrometer-scale features as we...

The abundant flavonoid aglycone, naringenin, which is responsible for the bitter taste in grapefruits, has been shown to possess hypolipidemic and anti-inflammatory effects both in vitro and in vivo. Recently, our group demonstrated that naringenin inhibits hepatitis C virus (HCV) production, while others demonstrated its potential in the treatment of hyperlipidemia and diabetes. However, narin...