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1 You can view your results TOMORROW AFTERNOON, Friday July 21st 2017, from 3 PM to 4 PM, at Prof. Raimondi’s office, building n. 6 “Giulio Natta”, North tower, second floor. Surname________________ Name ________________registration (matricola)_____________ Technologies for regenerative medicine - Prof. Manuela T. Raimondi Examination theme – July 18th, 2017 Read the text below and answer, point by point, to the related questions. BIOARTIFICIAL PANCREAS Let us consider a bioartificial pancreas modelled in vitro, that in the future could be anastomosed to a patient to function as an intravascular bioartificial pancreas. The device can be modelled as a cylindrical cartridge containing pancreatic β cells embedded in a hydrogel called “matrigel”. The device is designed to be connected to the blood vessel of a patient through lateral tubes. The cartridge is composed by a central cylinder filled with cells embedded in matrigel, coaxial to an internal tube running inside the first cylinder and connected to two lateral tubes connected to a culture medium perfusion system. Within the device, the insulin synthesised by the β cells diffuses into the culture medium stream. The culture medium and the cell-loaded matrigel are separated by a semi-permeable membrane of average porosity of 10 nm. The external membrane of the cartridge surrounding the cell-loaded hydrogel is impermeable. The oxygen concentration in the culture medium is c0. The device is currently being tested in vitro and, if successful also in pre-clinical models, it will be anastomosed to the blood vessels of patients with no functional β cells. Answer briefly to the questions in the table (points 5/33): What is the therapeutic product described above? the device comprising a cartridge containing matrigel and cells…