birc newsletter april 2016
TRANSCRIPT
IN THIS ISSUE-BIRC News-Editorial-BIRC Features -New BIRC Members-How To Be A Good Scientist-Recent BIRC Publications
AGENDA
Tissue engineering meeting every Thursday 10AM-11AM
Biomaterials meeting every Friday 2pm-3pm
Organ-on-a-chip meeting every Monday 11:15AM-12:15AM
APRIL 2016 | VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 8
ORGANON-A-CHIP
BIOMATERIALS
BIOMEMSMICROFLUIDICS
TISSUE ENGINEERING
BIRC-update
Biomaterials Innovation Research Center
Fellows are considered as accomplished members and role models in the field of biomaterials science and enginee-ring. Fellows are expected, through word and deed, to fos-ter the field of biomaterials and to support its professio-nal development as a practical and intellectual endeavour. The induction to the College of Fellows will take place at the opening ceremony of the World Biomaterials Congress in Montreal, Canada on Wednesday, May 18, 2016. We con-gratulate Prof. Khademhosseini on this esteemed honour.
Prof. Ali Khademhosseini selected as a Fellow in Biomaterials Science and Engineering (FBSE).
APRIL 2016 | VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 8BIRC-update
BIRC News
Prof. Ali Khademhosseini Speaking at Skoltech Colloquium
The Skoltech colloquium was established in 2013 in Moscow, Russia. The goal of this event is to bring together individuals with many different perspectives in order to en-gage with faculty and students at Skoltech in order to promote the cross-fertilization of ideas. Skoltech invites world leading scien-tists to talk on the topic of their expertise.
Prof. Ali Khademhosseini will be spea-king on “Nano- and micro-fabricated hy-drogels for regenerative engineering.”
New Cover for 10th Anniversary of the Small JournalSmall is among Wiley’s highly-regarded Ad-vanced Materials range of publications. In the past decade, Small has grown to beco-me one of the top journals in nanotechno-logy. Small has provided a more thorough understanding of science, as well as at the nanoscale. It has also led to the applicati-on of nanoscience across various disciplines.
Using Organ-on-Chips Through Free-Form Blood Vessels - Featured on New Cover for Lab on a Chip Journal
The current issue with blood vessel-on-a-chip models is that they are too bulky and genera-te too much waste volume relative to the small size of individual organoids. Members of BIRC addressed these issues by developing a new form of vascular module based on polydimet-hylsiloxane (PDMS) hollow tubes. This discove-ry was featured on the cover of Lab on a Chip.
MARCH 2016 | VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 7BIRC-Update
Continued on next page
Boosting clinical translation of nanomedicine By Hae Lin Jang, Yu Shrike Zhang
In the past few decades, the field of na-notechnology has significantly progres-sed, leading to success in the design and synthesis of functional nanoparticles for therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Nanomedicine, which is the application of nanotechnology in medicine, can be utilized to create novel formulations for targeted drug delivery that are potentially safer and thus can lead to better patient outcomes through a reduction in drug side effects. However, the clinical translation of these formulations has been limited due to expensive and lengthy regulatory processes and the inability to compre-hensively assess the safety and efficacy of the nanomedicines. Thus, rigorous and innovative preclinical testing models are needed to evaluate these formulations to ensure their successful clinical trans-lation and future commercial availability.
The unique physiochemical properties of nanomaterials, endowed by their nano-meter scale, have enabled new mecha-nisms to diagnose and treat diseases with enhanced efficacy through maximized tar-get specificity. For example, nanoparticles can be used as therapeutic carriers to en-capsulate and release drugs at target sites via systemic delivery and high accessibility to region where large-sized particles can-not reach. Also, nanoparticles containing contrast agents can act as diagnostic sen-sors for real-time detection and visualiza-tion of diseases inside the body. In additi-on, nanoparticles with optimized shapes
and sizes can modulate cellular functions by direct attachment onto the surface of or internalization by the cells. Further-more, biomimetic nanoparticles have facilitated tissue regeneration through enhanced host integration. However, despite the rapid advancement of nano-technologies in biomedicine, the transla-tion into practice has been relatively slow.
Although there are several barriers to the clinical translation of nanomedicine for-mulations, it is imperative to seek novel and creative mechanisms to overcome these obstacles to allow commercial access to drugs that are more effective than those currently on the market. The implemen-tation of novel preclinical testing models will enable these drugs to be rigorously tested and available on the market faster.
Animal testing models, already limited by existing economic and ethical burdens, are not optimal for this aim as they possess different genetic factors and thus do not accurately predict the human response to the drug. Therefore, we need more relia-ble in vitro model platforms, that can pre-cisely mimic the properties and functions of the human organ systems to advance the clinical translation of nanomedicine.Organ-on-a-chip systems are miniatu-rized human cell culture platforms that can mimic the microarchitecture, func-tions, and physiology of an organ sys-tem, can simulate drugs and thus pre-dict their and toxicity in the human body.
APRIL 2016 | VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 8BIRC-Update
The human body contains a sophistica-ted network of blood vessels that inter-connect organs; this circulatory system is essential in sustaining the functions of individual organs. In this integrated en-vironment, neither organs nor their res-ponses are isolated, meaning that the be-havior of one organ upon treatment of a nanomedicine formulation will be contin-gent on that of the other linked organs.
Therefore, building realistic in vitro hu-man organ models embedded in an in-terconnected microfluidic platform will allow the observation of the drug’s ef-fect on each organ, and accurately pre-dict drug efficacy and any potential side effects. These models can be made across a range of complexity from eit-her individual or multiple organ types, including the lung, kidney, blood ves-sel, airway, and bone marrow, as well as their interconnected forms such as the micro cell culture analog (μCCA) devi-ces and the microphysiological systems where up to ten organs are integra-ted in order to study their interactions.
The field of nanomedicine is rapidly de-veloping and consequently, the demand for clinical translation is quickly expan-ding. Since rationally designed nanoma-
terials can lead to innovative treatment modalities and better patient outco-mes, biomedical scientists and engineers should actively seek the best route to sa-fely develop the field of nanomedicine.
Biomimetic platforms, such as organs-on-a-chip, will provide unprecedented opportunities to accurately evaluate the safety and efficacy of nanomedicine for-mulations, leading to higher clinical trial success rates. Government organizati-ons have recently allocated a significant amount of funding to help further the development of these innovative bio-mimetic platforms for drug delivery. As interest in this field continues to grow, we envision that the clinical translati-on of nanomedicine will be significantly facilitated and will lead to groundbrea-king revolutions in drug delivery plat-forms and ultimately, human healthcare.
Cellular response due to nanoparticle uptake.
Nanoparticle biosensor responsive to light.
Nanoparticles forming a particle interaction corona.
BIRC Pictures
Prof. Khademhosseini together with Prof. Stephen Hawking.
BIRC Members coming together for a farewell dinner.
BIRC Members at Royal East Restaurant for a farewell dinner.
Prof. Khademhosseini honored at Nowruz event at the White House.
Seminar at ICOMM 2016, UC Irvine By Ali Khademhosseini
Prof. Khademhosseini was invited to give a keynote presentation at the Interna-tional Conference of Micro-Manufactu-ring. He delievered a presentation titled “Microengineered hydrogels in regenera-tive medicine.” along with the other key-note speakers, Dr. Sung-Hoon Ahn on “hybrid manufacturing of smart ma-terials” and Dr. Zangerle on “rapid mo-lecular diagnosis at the point-of-care.”
The entire image gallery and summary of talks is available here: http://icomm2016.northwestern.edu/
APRIL 2016 | VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 8BIRC-Update
Arianna DefeudisMasters Student, Biomedical Enginee-ring, Politecnico of Turin, Italy.
Yixiao Zhou Undergraduate Senior Student, Major in Life ScienceTongji University, China
Amrita SinghM. Tech, Medical Nanotechnology, Sastra UniversityE: [email protected]
New BIRC Members
VISITING SCIENTISTS& POST-DOCTORATES
GRADUATE FELLOWS
Sara Saheb KashafMPhil, Advanced Chemical Enginee-ring, University of CambridgeE: [email protected]
Rosa Chabok BSc Biology, Ryerson UniversityE: [email protected]
Danial Khorsandi
BSc Biotechnology, Isfahan University of Technology E: [email protected]
Sina Sharifi
M.S. Organic ChemistryAmirkabir UniversityE: [email protected]
How to be a good scientist
Finding Balance By Marie des Jardins
Finding a balance between work, play, and other activities isn’t easy. Different peop-le will give you very different advice. Some people say you should be spending eigh-ty or ninety percent of your waking hours working on your thesis. Others (myself included) think that this is unrealistic and unhealthy, and that it’s important for your mental and physical health to have other active interests.
If you have a family, you will have to ba-lance your priorities even more careful-ly. Graduate school isn’t worth risking your personal relationships over; be sure that you save time and energy to fo-cus on the people who matter to you. One of the keys to balancing your life is to develop a schedule that’s more or less consistent. You may decide that you will only work during the days, and that eve-nings are for your hobbies. Or you might decide that afternoons are for socializing and exercising, and work late at night. I de-cided very early on in graduate school that weekends were for me, not for my the-sis, and I think it helped me to stay sane. Many graduate students hit the doldrums around the end of the second or beginning of the third year, when they’re finishing up their coursework and trying to focus in on a thesis topic. Sometimes this process can take quite a while. Try to find useful, en-joyable activities that can take your mind off of the thesis. Sing in a choir, learn a foreign language, study the history of an-cient Greece, garden, or knit. If you sche-dule regular activities (rehearsals, tennis lessons), you will probably find it easier to
avoid drifting aimlessly from day to day. In the final push to finish your thesis, though, you will almost certainly have less time for social activities than you used to. Your friends may start to make you feel guilty, whether they intend to or not. Warn them in advance that you expect to turn down lots of invitations, and it’s nothing personal -- but you need to focus on your thesis for a while. Then you’ll be all done and free as a bird! (Un-til the next phase of your life starts...)
Finding A Thesis Topic By Marie des Jardins
Generally speaking, a good Ph.D. thesis topic is interesting to you, to your advisor, and to the research community. As with many aspects of graduate school, the ba-lance you find will depend at least in part on the relationship you have with your ad-visor. Some professors have well defined long-term research programs and expect their students to contribute directly to this program. Others have much looser, but still related ongoing projects. Still others will take on anyone with an inte-resting idea, and may have a broad ran-ge of interesting ideas to offer their stu-dents. Be wary of the advisor who seems willing to let you pursue any research di-rection at all. You probably won’t get the technical support you need, and they may lose interest in you when the next gradu-ate student with a neat idea comes along.
Referenceshttp://www.physlink.com/Education/grad_how2_play.cfmhttp://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.rese-arch.html
Dr. Ali KhademhosseiniAditya ChawlaDr. Mehmet DokmeciDr. Rahmi Oklu
Katelyn BrinegarEditors
Social Media
http://www.biomaterialsinnovation.orghttp://www.tissueeng.net
Contact detailsIf you would like to contribute (ideas, suggestions) or submit an article or abstract, please send an e-mailto [email protected]
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Website
Recent BIRC Publications
Automated microfuidic platform of bead-based electrochemical immunosen-sor integrated with bioreactor for continu-al monitoring of cell secreted biomarkersRiahi et al. Nature Scientific Reports
Microvalves were further integrated in the mi-cro uidic immunosensor chip to achieve program-mable operations of the immunoassay including bead loading and unloading, binding, washing, and electrochemical sensing. The platform allo-wed convenient integration of the immunosensor with liver-on-chips to carry out continual quanti-fication of biomarkers secreted from hepatocytes.
Graphene-based materials for tissue engineeringShin et al., Advanced Drug Delivery ReviewsGraphene and its chemical derivatives have been a pivotal new class of nanomaterials and a mo-del system for quantum behavior. The material’s excellent electrical conductivity, biocompatibility, surface area and thermal properties are of much interest to the scientific community. Two-dimen-sional graphene materials have been widely used in various biomedical research areas such as bi-oelectronics, imaging, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. In this review, the authors highlight the recent applications of graphene-based ma-terials in tissue engineering and regenerative me-dicine. In particular, they discuss the application of graphene-based materials in cardiac, neural,
and skin/adipose tissue engineering. The authors also discuss the potential risk factors of graphene-based materials in tissue engineering. In conclusion, this paper outlines the opportunities in the usage of graphene-based materials for clinical applications.
Biomarkers and diagnostic tools for detection of Helicobacter pylori. Khalilpour A, Kazemzadeh M, Tamayol A, Oklu R, Khademhosseini A. Applied Microbiology and BiotechnologyVascularization and Angiogenesis in Tissue Engineering: Beyond Creating Static Networks.Rouwkema J, Khademhosseini A. Trends in BiotechnologyPlatelet-Rich Blood Derivatives for Stem Cell-Based Tissue Engineering and Regeneration. Masoudi E, Ribas J, Kaushik G, Leijten J, Khademhosseini A. Current Stem Cell Reports
There is an increasing interest in developing microfluidic bioreactors and organs-on-a-chip platforms combined with sensing capabilities for continual monitoring of cell-secreted bio-markers. Conventional approaches such as ELI-SA and mass spectroscopy cannot satisfy the needs of continual monitoring as they are la-bor-intensive and not easily integrable with low-volume bioreactors. This paper reports on the development of an automated microfluidic bead-based electrochemical immunosensor for in-line measurement of cell-secreted biomarkers. to immobilize biomarker-recognition molecules. Schematic of bead-based microfluidic sensor.
Overall application of graphene for regenerative medicine.