Aerosol exposure for breathing AX Lung-on-Chip

The VITROCELL® Cloud Alpha AX12 is our newest innovation in the Cloud family and presents a great leap forward in automated exposure of cell cultures with breathing function. It combines highly efficient testing with ease of use. The development is based on the well-known and frequently published VITROCELL® Cloud formats (6-, 12-, 24- and 96-well).
Its functionality enables fully automated processes with an all-in-one control unit. Everyday experiments at the Air/Liquid Interface have never been easier.

It is suitable for the nebulization of solutions and suspensions. Fields of application are, but are not limited to, screening of inhaled drugs and toxicity testing of inhaled substances such as chemicals, nanoparticles and airborne pathogens.

VITROCELL® Cloud Alpha AX 12  (PDF)

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Increase of nebulizations and evacuation of residual gaseous compounds

A typical Cloud exposure allows 3 consecutive nebulizations. The PowerVent option enables an increase of the dose by adding further nebulizations. After each nebulization the humidity is removed by a short venting period before starting the new one. The venting function can be edited in the software. The PowerVent unit is delivered ready-to-use with an integrated vacuum pump.

VITROCELL® Cloud Alpha PowerVent  (PDF)

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https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules27030985

Jörg Radnik ¹, Vasile-Dan Hodoroaba ¹, Harald Jungnickel ², Jutta Tentschert ², Andreas Luch ², Vanessa Sogne ³, Florian Meier ³, Loïc Burr ⁴, David Schmid ⁴, Christoph Schlager ⁵, Tae Hyun Yoon ^6,7, Ruud Peters ⁸, Sophie M. Briffa ⁹ and Eugenia Valsami-Jones ⁹

¹ Division 6.1, Federal Institute for Material Testing and Research (BAM), Unter den Eichen 44–46, 12203 Berlin, Germany;
² Department of Chemical & Product Safety, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Max-Dohrn-Strasse 8–10, 10589 Berlin, Germany; 
³ Postnova Analytics GmbH, Rankine-Strasse 1, 86899 Landsberg, Germany;
⁴ Centre Suisse d’Electronique et de Microtechnique (CSEM), Bahnhofstrasse 1, 7302 Landquart, Switzerland;
⁵ Vitrocell Systems GmbH, Fabrik Sonntag 3, 78193 Waldkirch, Germany; c.schlager@vitrocell.com
⁶ Department of Chemistry, College of Natural Sciences, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea;
⁷ Institute of Next Generation Material Design, Hanyang University, Seoul 04673, Korea
⁸ Wageningen Food Safety Research, Wageningen University & Research, Akkermaalsbos 2, 6708 Wageningen, The Netherlands;
⁹ School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK;

The aim of this publication is to discuss how and when automated preparation can enhance the quality of the measurement results. For modern apparatuses, the measurement conditions are recorded and saved in the metadata automatically. As a result, the main reason for varying results is the different sample preparation. An actual interlaboratory comparison is ongoing to investigate the effect of different preparation methods systematically for ToF-SIMS. An air–liquid interface was developed to show that automation is possible for rather complex samples. Biological samples can be prepared in a reproducible manner, under exactly the same conditions on a TEM grid for the analysis of size and shape. Furthermore, chemical analysis can be performed by means of mass spectrometry.

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https://doi.org/10.3390/nano11123226

Sivakumar Murugadoss ¹, Sonja Mülhopt ², Silvia Diabaté ³, Manosij Ghosh ¹, Hanns-Rudolf Paur ²,
Dieter Stapf ², Carsten Weiss ³, and Peter H. Hoet ¹,

¹ Laboratory of Toxicology, Unit of Environment and Health, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
² Institute for Technical Chemistry, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany
³ Institute of Biological and Chemical Systems—Biological Information Processing, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany

In this study, they investigated the influence of agglomeration on the deposition and cytotoxic potency of TiO₂ NMs at the ALI. Our results indicate that dose deposition and the cytotoxic potential are influenced by agglomeration, particularly for nano-sized TiO₂ particles.

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https://doi.org/10.3390/nano11071685

Matthias Hufnagel ¹, Nadine May ², Johanna Wall ¹, Nadja Wingert ³, Manuel Garcia-Käufer ³, Ali Arif ³, Christof Hübner ⁴, Markus Berger ⁵, Sonja Mülhopt ², Werner Baumann ², Frederik Weis ⁶, Tobias Krebs ⁵, Wolfgang Becker ⁴, Richard Gminski ³, Dieter Stapf ², and Andrea Hartwig ¹,

¹ Department of Food Chemistry and Toxicology, Institute of Applied Biosciences, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany;
² Institute for Technical Chemistry, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany; 
³ Institute for Infection Prevention and Hospital Epidemiology, Medical Center—University of Freiburg, Faculty of Medicine, University of Freiburg, 79110 Freiburg, Germany;
⁴ Fraunhofer Institute of Chemical Technology, 76327 Pfinztal, Germany; 
⁵ Vitrocell® Systems GmbH, 79183 Waldkirch, Germany; 
⁶ Palas GmbH, 76229 Karlsruhe, Germany; 

This study was the first to investigate the toxicological effects of well characterized aerosols released during combustion of thermoplastic nanocomposites using an air–liquid interface exposure system. Even though studies on the toxicological potential of combustion-generated particulate matter as well as VOCs have been published, none of them was designed to investigate the effect of the native aerosol using appropriate realistic lung cell culture models. In the current study we investigated the combustion behavior of PE-based nanocomposites on a lab-scale burner. As nanoscaled fillers TiO2 NP, CuO NP, as well as CNT were chosen for this study, with TiO2 NP representing a commonly used insoluble and inert nanomaterial, CuO NP as a known in vitro cyto- as well as genotoxic nanomaterial, and CNT as a fiber-shaped nanomaterial.

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