Theberge’s research probes the chemical signals that cells use to communicate with one another. The organization of our bodies, with different types of cells taking on discrete functions, depends on this biochemical language.

“We’re alive because our cells can exchange chemical messages in appropriate ways,” said Theberge, who is also an affiliate assistant professor of urology at the UW. “All cells — human cells, microbes — utilize chemical signals to deliver information and influence the properties of other cells.”

Theberge focuses on the chemical messages released by cells, which diffuse out into the environment — be it a body or a colony of microbes — and are picked up by other groups of cells. To measure these signals and characterize their effects, scientists need precision: experimental systems that will let researchers set up a population of cells, identify the types and precise amounts of chemicals the cells release, how they diffuse through the environment, which chemical messages are picked up by other groups of cells and their effects.

Theberge and her collaborators — which include Erwin Berthier, a UW affiliate assistant professor of chemistry and co-founder of the medical device company Tasso, Inc. — develop and manufacture laboratory tools to make these precise measurements possible. These include microscale plastic and gel-based dividers, which can partition commonly used cell culture plates or the surface of a slide into more complex arrangements of compartments. These allow researchers to grow different populations of cells in close proximity and sample the types of chemical signals that pass between them.

“While we pursue our own biological hypotheses, we’re also focused on exporting the technologies we’ve developed to other laboratories,” said Theberge. “We really want these tools to be available and used widely.”

Depending on the arrangement of compartments, signals can diffuse horizontally between cell populations separated by short walls, through vertical stacks of cells or other arrangements. Theberge and her team design their cell culture devices with the physics of fluidics in mind. They precisely control the position of liquids in their devices via capillary forces — the passive forces that allow fluids to flow.

Theberge has also put these tools to work. She has started more than 20 collaborations since joining the UW faculty in 2016. The tools she and her group have developed are being used to identify cellular signals involved in testis development and male infertility, communication between epithelial and endothelial cells in kidneys and the immune system signals involved in inflammation. Some of these experiments study chemical signals present in tissue samples from patients, including a collaboration with the .

Her group has also been working on molecular methods to accurately quantify the amount of different types of chemicals that are received by individual cells.

“That will give us information not just on the type of signal reaching a cell, but how signal strength and origin can affect cell communication,” said Theberge.

Theberge earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Williams College and a doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining the UW faculty, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. According to the Office of Research at the UW, Theberge is the 11th faculty member to earn a Packard Fellowship, and the fourth overall from the Department of Chemistry, after Brandi Cossairt, and former UW faculty member Younan Xia.

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For more information, contact Theberge at abt1@uw.edu.

A new device developed at the ÌìÃÀÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½ would let doctors use ultrasound to move kidney stones inside the body and help them pass by natural means.

“Ultrasound is used today to break up large stones. That’s not what we’re doing,” said , an engineer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. “We’ve developed low-power ultrasound that could move small stones to reduce pain, expense and treatment times.”

A 15-patient trial using this technology is now under way at UW Medicine. The research is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, which is interested in the project because astronauts have an increased risk of developing kidney stones during space travel.

The UW team showed a prototype last spring at the ‘s annual meeting, and Bailey was invited to give a . He was the only presenter in that session who was not a medical doctor.

“This is something urologists are excited about, so that’s why we’re pursuing it,” Bailey said.

Kidney stones are crystals that develop in the urine. Shock-wave ultrasound has been used to treat big kidney stones for 30 years. That technique, known as lithotripsy, sends short pulses of high-energy ultrasound to shatter large stones. While the technique is noninvasive it usually requires general anesthesia and a hospital visit. It also leaves behind fragments that can grow and require another trip to the hospital or emergency room.

A patient with a small stone traditionally has to wait, drink plenty of water, and hope that the stone passes uneventfully. Medical studies have looked at standing on your head or hitting the patient in the lower back (technically called inversion and percussion). Those methods try to jiggle small stones from the lower part of the kidney, where they have only a 35 percent chance of passing naturally, to the middle of the kidney, where they have an 80 percent chance of passing without treatment.

The UW team proposes a gentler, more targeted way to guide the stones toward the exit route.

The prototype is a commercial ultrasound system modified to emit pulses only slightly stronger than those used for pregnancy imaging. These sustained, low-intensity waves are just enough to push the crystal through the surrounding fluid.

In the lab, , an engineer at the Applied Physics Laboratory who helped build the device, points an ultrasound probe at a stone inside a latex kidney. She activates the ultrasonic pulse and the stone immediately swings away through the clear liquid. A doctor would put the probe on a patient’s lower back, then use an onscreen ultrasound image to locate the stone and direct the ultrasonic pulse.

Urologists and urology residents at UW Medicine tested three successive prototypes on artificial kidneys and pigs, and helped to design the touchscreen user interface.

“We’ve had extensive testing in an animal model,” said Dr. , an assistant professor of urology at UW Medicine. “If it acts in the same way in a human kidney, I think it’s extremely promising.”

The current Seattle trial is the first time the system is being tested on humans.

Besides guiding kidney stones to help them pass naturally, other applications could be to reposition a stone before or during surgery; to displace a large stone obstructing the ureter to relieve the patient’s pain and avoid emergency surgery; and perhaps someday to escort small stones right down the ureter.

If clinical trials go well, researchers believe the device could be used in an urologist’s office or by trained emergency room staff, potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. medical expenses.

The team is working with the UW . Once the UW team has proven the technique works in humans, Bailey said, the project will be ready to seek FDA clearance and be brought to market.

“Just get it out there and let us try it,” said Bailey, who also is a UW assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “That was the feedback we got from the urologists.”

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For more information, contact Bailey at 206-619-2035 or bailey@apl.washington.edu.

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