We got new Babies and They are growing Neurites!

These are some new pictures we took of the Day 1 samples on September 27. They look really good and we are very optimistic about them living through the weekend unlike the last suicidal bunch.

I'll Explain what you are seeing here. First off we have the PEG Control. This is the hydrogel consisting of pure PEG and rat embryonic stem cells. I think it looks a lot like cement.

This picture is of our Fibrin control. This is a sample that consists of 1 part Thrombin for every 5 parts Fibrin, which means its heavy on the fibrin so we get an idea what the cells would look like if they were growing in a fibrin enriched environment. This is important because neurites are seen extensively in fibrin samples, so if we can beat this we will be very excited!


This is one of the co-polymers with PEG and Fibrin. I think this is the 25 parts Thrombin to 250 parts Fibrin. The reason you can't see crap in this sample is that there is a lot of Fibrin still in the sample, after a while it will get lighter as the cells consume the fibrin. Until then we will be taking pictures of this nonsense. The cells in here look really healthy though.


Ok, here is the interesting stuff. Splinter and I had a talk a while ago about the practicality of using big pores to small pores, so we decided to make two porous samples, one with HUGE pores and one with the minimum pore radius we were willing to use. Splinter says this one is mine: Limited Impact Porous Gel 1T to 5F. She is really excited about this sample, even though I think hers looks better than this. The good news is that we think we saw neurite extension on Day 3, Friday September 29th. Which is HUGE cause we don't even
have much in the fibrin samples.

Ok, here we see Splinters sample Max Porous 25 T to 250 F. Here you can kind of make out a grain structure in the gel, which is really cool, it looks like the pattern you would get in a chunk of wood. It is really exciting because we are doing all this to make channels for neurites to extend through and here we can definitely see the channel structures. I think this is gunna be our winner if it doesn't degrade to fast. Hopefully it will be around on Monday!