Seminars

Seminar Abstract

The availability of human tissues, engineered to meet the needs of a specific patient and clinical condition, would radically change the way we currently treat tissue loss due to trauma, disease or congenital defects. Tissue engineering is trying to address this major challenge by directing the assembly of stem cells into functional tissues. To this end, the bioengineers have developed a new generation of “biomimetic” systems to “instruct” the cells to differentiate into the right phenotypes in the right locations, through the combined use of biomaterial scaffolds (structural and logistic templates for tissue formation) and bioreactors (controllable environments providing molecular and physical signals). Another major challenge for the field is related to the engineering of human tissues for fundamental biological research, study of disease, and “human in a dish” screening platforms. Here, the requirement is to generate large numbers of small-size tissues, each being a minimally functional unit representative of human physiology. While the specific requirements for regenerative medicine and screening technologies are different in many respects, the utility of engineered tissues depends in both cases on our ability to predictably guide cell fate and function. In all cases, the biomaterials, bioreactors and imaging modalities are playing critical roles in unlocking the full biological potential of the cells. Over the last two decades, tissue engineering has gone a long way from a largely empirical discipline to a mature field, with some successes, some failures, and many challenges to face. This talk will discuss the evolution of our approach to engineering human heart and bone tissues, and some of the challenges ahead.
Speaker Biographical Information