Keynote Speaker
Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert
Professor & Chair
The University of Texas at Austin
Invited Speakers
Anjan Contractor
Chief Executive Officer & Co-founder
BeeHex
Michael Detamore
Chair & Professor
The University of Oklahoma
Melissa Grunlan
Associate Professor
Texas A&M University
Patrick Kelley
Associate Professor, Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care
UT Austin Dell Medical School
Hyun Jung Kim
Assistant Professor
The Universtity of Texas at Austin
Jordan Miller
Assistant Professor
Rice University
Daniel Siegwart
Assistant Professor
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Anjan Contractor is an American entrepreneur, inventor, engineer and business executive best known for winning a NASA grant for building a 3D printer that successfully printed edible pizza. His company, BeeHex, Inc., commercializes 3D food printing.
Rethink Personalization with 3D Food Printing
Over ten million Americans are restricted by special dietary needs due to food-related allergies. In medical centers, patients with special dietary needs must adhere to a strict diet to overcome a range of negative effects. Additionally, many Americans follow strict diets for weight-loss or physical performance enhancement (i.e. athletes). Hence, there is a rapidly-expanding need for personalized nutrition based on a variety of physiological conditions, dietary requirements, and individual preference. Creating and delivering a personalized diet, tailored to an individual’s needs, is very difficult to manage by food manufacturers, management companies, and restaurants. BeeHex is developing 3D food printing technology that is capable of effectively providing solutions to the problems stated herein. BeeHex 3D food printers have demonstrated precise extrusion of a variety of food theologies through its multi-nozzle pneumatic extruder. Currently, BeeHex is piloting 3D food printing equipment to allow on-demand and on-the-spot food personalization. In parallel, the company is working on Government and Military deployment opportunities, tapping efficiency, reduced waste and fresh food on demand through 3D printing.
Michael Detamore is the Director, Professor, and Stephenson Chair #1 of the Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. He earned his B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Colorado and his Ph.D. in bioengineering from Rice University. He spent 12 years at the University of Kansas as a professor in the Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering before moving to the University of Oklahoma.
He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the Coulter Foundation Translational Research Award, and was a Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor at NUI Galway in Ireland in 2011. He is also a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and a recipient of the Iwao Yasuda Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society. His primary research interest is regenerative medicine, including biomaterials and stem cells. Regenerative medicine efforts include nerve regeneration, but focus primarily on bone and cartilage regeneration, including the temporomandibular joint (TMJ), knee, cranium, and trachea, with a particular focus on translational regenerative medicine. Central research themes include umbilical cord stem cells and gradients in tissue engineering. He has published over 100 papers, and has been awarded five U.S. patents. He has also given ~65 invited lectures around the world, including in the United States, Italy, Switzerland, Scotland, Ireland, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, India, the United Arab Emirates, and Japan. In addition to his research, he enjoys teaching and has won numerous teaching awards.
Will Chondroinductive Materials Revolutionize Cartilage Regeneration?
One of the core tenets of our philosophy for tissue regeneration include the use of “raw materials,” where biomaterials themselves serve as both building blocks and bioactive signals. In recent years, a few groups around the world have gravitated toward cartilage matrix as a potentially chondroinductive material for cartilage regeneration. The major challenge to date in cartilage injury has been creating a biomaterial-only strategy that is capable of regenerating true hyaline-like cartilage without the addition of growth factors or exogenous cells.
We attempted to establish nomenclature for this burgeoning new field in our 2015 review in Advanced Healthcare Materials, and in the past few years have focused our efforts on establishing chondroinductivity in vitro, and in developing new materials synthesis strategies to provide ease of application for orthopedic surgeons in the operating room. By leveraging nanotechnology, we have developed a paste-like material constructed from cartilage matrix with encouraging mechanical performance post-crosslinking, and which avoids contraction after extended culture.
Looking to the future, we are working on next-generation approaches to chondroinductive materials. If indeed chondroinductive materials exist, and if they can be delivered easily, are safe, and can be provided at reasonable cost and with a reasonable regulatory strategy, chondroinductive materials may hold the potential to revolutionize cartilage regeneration.
Prof. Melissa Grunlan is currently an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University. She is also a faculty member of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering. Prof. Grunlan obtained her B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Polymers in Coatings from North Dakota State University (Fargo, ND) and was then employed with the H.B. Fuller Company (St. Paul, MN) for four years. She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA). Prof. Grunlan’s research is broadly focused on developing new biomaterials to improve the performance of medical devices and regenerative therapies. Several specific research areas include anti-fouling coatings for blood-contacting devices, self-cleaning membranes for implanted biosensors, and scaffolds for osteochondral and bone tissue healing.
“Self-fitting” shape memory polymer (SMP) scaffolds to treat craniomaxillofacial (CMF) bone defects
Scaffold properties are essential to maximize healing of critical-sized craniomaxillofacial (CMF) bone defects. Regeneration would be enhanced by scaffolds that can precisely match the irregular boundaries of bone defects as well as exhibit an interconnected pore morphology, robust mechanical properties and controlled rates of degradation. In this work, shape memory polymer (SMP) scaffolds were developed with the capacity to conformally “self-fit” into irregular defects. SMP scaffolds were based on networks formed from crosslinking poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) diacrylate. Following exposure to warm saline at T > Ttrans (Ttrans = Tm of PCL), the scaffold became malleable and could be pressed into an irregular model defect. Subsequent cooling caused the scaffold to lock in its temporary shape within the defect. In addition, SMPs were formed as semi-interpenetrating networks (semi-IPNs) comprised of a cross-linked PCL-DA network and thermoplastic poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) or poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA). The ratio of PCL-DA to PLLA or PLGA was systematically altered to control mechanical properties and rates of degradation. Polydopamine-coated scaffolds exhibited superior bioactivity (i.e. formation of hydroxyapatite in vitro), osteoblast adhesion, proliferation, osteogenic gene expression and ECM deposition. In addition, polydopamine-coated scaffolds induced significantly higher expression of bone-related proteins by h-MSCs relative to uncoated scaffolds even in the absence of osteogenic media supplements.
Dr. Kelley is a practicing craniofacial and reconstructive plastic surgeon, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care, UT Dell Medical School. He is also Adjunct Faculty, Department of Biomedical Engineering. His practice is focused on solutions to complex craniofacial reconstruction treating congenital malformations, facial trauma and head and neck cancer. He is one of a few craniofacial surgeons that is capable of the microsurgical transfer of tissue (autotransplantation) and has a number of insights into the biological relationship between tissue type, tissue volume and vascular infow/outflow which has a significant impact on the the world of biomaterials. He is also co-founder of Texas Free Market Surgery, the only truly value based, price transparent surgical provider in the Texas. The advent of value based surgery will likely impact the adoption of biomaterials in the future.
Clinical Application Of Biomaterials Today; What We Need for Tomorrow And How Value Based Healthcare Will Impact Future Biomaterial Adoption
The use of biomaterials in clinical practice today is widespread and the urge to pull needed parts off the shelf for physicians is strong especially in the climate of the fee-for-service revenue model of the healthcare system today.
What do most biomaterials today have in common? What are their short falls? What are the opportunities for tomorrow? The biological similarities and limitations of today’s products and observations about the “blood flow of things” from experts in wound healing will be reviewed. The aim is to impart a clinical understanding of the “the human system” as a model for tomorrow.
What will be important to physicians in the world of value based healthcare delivery, the delivery model of tomorrow?
Dr. Kim is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He was previously a Technology Development Fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and a Leo Kadanoff and Stuart Rice postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago.
Kim's research focuses on innovating bioinspired engineering principles to develop biomedical platform technologies that uncover the fundamental questions in human diseases. By leveraging the miniaturized human ‘Organs-on-Chips’ microphysiological system, we create a paradigm-shifting biomimicry to reconstitute the physical structure, physiological function, and mechanical dynamics of living human organs, then recapitulate the complex pathophysiology of diseases with microenvironmental cues. We are particularly interested in emulating the host-microbiome ecosystem that can orchestrate human health and disease by encompassing multidisciplinary approaches of clinical microbiology, microfluidics, synthetic biology, and tissue engineering. We aim to utilize this mini-organ model to understand complex crosstalk between epithelium, microbiome, immune cells and microenvironmental factors during disease pathogenesis. We are currently building human intestine models to identify pathophysiological and etiological factors in human gastrointestinal diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), or colorectal cancer (CRC). We also discover unprecedented models demonstrating host-microbiome interactions in vagina, placenta, oral cavity, skin, and gut-brain axis. Our ultimate goal is to develop a “Personalized human organ-on-a-chip” using patient’s (patient’s chips) as well as healthy individual’s sample (healthy donor’s chips) to define new therapeutic targets, test efficacy and toxicity of new drug candidates, study host-microbiome crosstalk, and contribute to the Precision Medicine Initiative.
Microengineered Human Gut-on-a-chip: From Organ Mimicry to Precision Medicine
Human gut microbiome is associated largely with the intestinal homeostasis, by which compromised host-gut microbiome ecosystem often leads to gastrointestinal diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Development of human relevant models is of great importance to investigate disease mechanism and therapeutic interventions, but existing in vivo or in vitro models are not able to independently control individual disease factors. Here, we describe a recently developed human gut-on-a-chip microphysiological system that can provide a biomimetic gut microenvironment inhabited by living human gut microbiome on the fully differentiated 3D villus microarchitecture under mechanically dynamic bowel movements. Long-term co-culture of gut microbiome on the microengineered gut model will contribute to understand the pathophysiology of human intestinal diseases. Further development by employing patient microbiome samples may contribute to the customized precision medicine.
Dr. Jordan S. Miller is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University. He directs the Physiologic Systems Engineering and Advanced Materials Laboratory, which employs synthetic chemistry, open-source 3D printing, and tissue engineering to understand the process of vascularization and to assemble living tissues with complex biomimetic organization. Dr. Miller previously received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Rice University in 2008.
3D Printing of Engineered Tissues with Vascular Networks
Tremendous strides have been achieved over the past several decades in the field of tissue engineering to construct implantable thin tissue constructs such as skin, cornea, and bladder. However, obtaining functional, physiologically relevant solid organ constructs is still a major challenge due to the necessity of a vascular system to supply nutrients and remove waste in thick constructs. Additionally, tissue engineers have historically focused on fabricating tissue constructs containing a single vascular network. However, a key feature of complex biological systems is the presence of interpenetrating networks, such as the respiratory tree with its entangled blood vessel network. These architectures are central to mammalian physiology yet they has remained elusive to fabricate in vitro. To address this challenge, we are developing 3D printing systems to fabricate tissue constructs on the order of several centimeters containing complex interpenetrating vascular networks. Fundamental control of photochemistry during stereolithographic 3D printing is now allowing us to pattern complex interpenetrating vascular networks within soft hydrogels composed primarily of water. Complex mathematical topologies serve as our vascular blueprints, and mammalian cells can also be entrapped in the patterned hydrogel during fabrication. We expect the performed studies will provide insight to the field by demonstrating some of the architectural features which are thought to be required to build living tissues the size of human organs.
Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert received her Bachelor's degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Chemical Engineering and Biology. She received her Master's and PhD degrees from California Institute of Technology in Chemical Engineering. She joined the faculty at Washington University in Biomedical Engineering in 2000 as an Asst. Professor, where she advanced to the position of the Joseph and Florence Farrow Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Vice Dean for Research in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. She joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in August 2016 as Professor & Department Chair of Biomedical Engineering and the Fletcher Stuckey Pratt Chair in Engineering. Her research focuses on developing biomaterials for drug delivery and cell transplantation for the treatment of peripheral nerve and spinal cord injury. She has written 5 book chapters and over 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals. She has US 9 patents and additional 1 patent applications submitted. Her research is funded by the NINDS & NIAMS (NIH), and previously she received early career awards from the Whitaker Foundation and the WH Coulter Foundation. She was Co-Director of the Center of Regenerative Medicine, as well as a member of the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders and Institute of Materials Science and Engineering at Washington University. Her honors include the Society for Biomaterials Clemson Award for Basic Research (2017), WU Dean’s Award for Excellence in Advising and Mentoring from School of Engineering and Applied Science (2008), WU Distinguished Faculty Award (2013) and Outstanding Faculty Mentor from the WU Graduate Student Senate (2015). She joined the College of Fellows for the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2011, she was elected a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2013, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2015, and the International College of Fellows in Biomaterials Science and Engineering in 2016. Her other professional service includes serving as an Associate Editor for Biotechnology and Bioengineering and the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A, a member of the Editorial Board of Acta Biomaterialia, and serving as a standing member of the Biomaterials/ Biointerfaces (BMBI) study section for the NIH (2010- 2013). She served as Chair for the 2013 Gordon Research Conference on Biomaterials & Tissue Engineering. She served as the co-President of the WU Association of Women Faculty from 2012-2014 and served as a WU Provost Faculty Fellow from 2012-2013.
Biomaterials for Drug Delivery to Treat Nerve Injury
The development of biomaterials to serve as scaffolds for wound healing and tissue repair is crucial for successful tissue engineering. My research focuses on developing biomaterials that promote cell survival and/or differentiation after transplantation for the treatment of nerve injury. My lab has developed heparin-binding affinity-based drug delivery systems that sequester growth factors within scaffolds and release growth factors in response to cell in-growth during tissue regeneration. More recently we have combined these scaffolds with embryonic stem cell-derived neural progenitor cells and shown that the combination of fibrin scaffolds and growth factor delivery can enhance cell survival and differentiation of neural progenitor cells transplanted after spinal cord injury. Furthermore, we demonstrated this approach enhanced functional recovery after spinal cord injury, as assessed by gridwalk. In conclusion, fibrin scaffold containing our drug delivery system can serve as a platform for cell transplantation for many applications in regenerative medicine by tailoring the choice of growth factors and the cell type used.
Dr. Daniel J. Siegwart is currently an Assistant Professor in the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and Department of Biochemistry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He received a B.S. in Biochemistry from Lehigh University in 2003, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2008 under the supervision of University Professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski. During his graduate studies, he received the Joseph A. Solomon Memorial Fellowship in Chemistry at CMU and was a National Science Foundation East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes Fellow at The University of Tokyo in 2006 with Prof. Kazunori Kataoka. He then completed a National Institutes of Health NRSA-sponsored Postdoctoral Fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Institute Professor Robert Langer (2008-2012). He began his independent research career in 2012. The central goal of the Siegwart Lab is to use materials chemistry to solve challenges in cancer therapy and diagnosis. In particular, they are focused on the development of new materials that can deliver RNAs to improve cancer outcomes. An array of coding and non-coding RNAs can now be used as cancer therapeutics (siRNA, miRNA, mRNA, CRISPR RNAs) because they are able to manipulate and edit expression of the essential genes that drive cancer development and progression. Although great advances have been made in the delivery of short RNAs, the ideal chemical and formulation composition is largely unknown for longer RNA cargo (mRNA, sgRNA. The Siegwart Lab aims to discover and define the critical physical and chemical properties of synthetic carriers required for therapeutic delivery of small (e.g. ~22 base pair miRNA) to large (e.g. ~5,000 nucleotide mRNA) RNAs. Their research is grounded in chemical design and takes advantage of the unique opportunities for collaborative research at UTSW Medical Center. They ultimately aspire to utilize chemistry and engineering to make a beneficial impact on human health.
Non-viral CRISPR/Cas gene editing enabled by co-delivery of mRNA and sgRNA inside of synthetic lipid nanoparticles
CRISPR/Cas is a revolutionary gene editing technology with wide-ranging utility. The safe, non-viral delivery of CRISPR/Cas components would greatly improve future therapeutic utility. The synthesis and development of zwitterionic amino lipids (ZALs) that are uniquely able to (co)deliver long RNAs including Cas9 mRNA and sgRNAs will be presented. ZAL nanoparticle (ZNP) delivery of low sgRNA doses (15 nm) reduces protein expression by >90 % in cells. In contrast to transient therapies (such as RNAi), ZNP delivery of sgRNA enables permanent DNA editing with an indefinitely sustained 95 % decrease in protein expression. ZNP delivery of mRNA results in high protein expression at low doses in vitro (<600 pM) and in vivo (1 mg/kg). Intravenous co-delivery of Cas9 mRNA and sgLoxP induced expression of floxed tdTomato in the liver, kidneys, and lungs of engineered mice. ZNPs provide a chemical guide for rational design of long RNA carriers, and represent a promising step towards improving the safety and utility of gene editing.
