Spring 2021 Bioengineering Seminars
Wednesdays, Noon – 1:00 PM
Due to the current COVID-19 crisis, all Bioengineering Seminars will be online. Please see this page each week for links to register for the broadcast. Thank you for your patience and cooperation.
January 27
Nancy Allbritton
Professor of Bioengineering & Dean of Engineering, University of Washington
Intestine on Chip for Normal Physiology and Disease Models
Organ-on-chips are miniaturized devices that arrange living cells to simulate functional subunits of tissues and organs. These microdevices provide exquisite control of tissue microenvironment for the investigation of organ-level physiology and disease. A 3D polarized epithelium using primary human or mouse gastrointestinal stem cells was developed to fully recapitulate gastrointestinal epithelial architecture and physiology. A planar monolayer comprised of stem/proliferative and differentiated primary cells is cultured on a shaped hydrogel scaffold with an array of crypt-like structures replicating the intestinal architecture. Imposition of chemical gradients across the crypt long axis yields a polarized epithelium with a stem-cell niche and differentiated cell zone. The stem cells proliferate, migrate and differentiate along the crypt axis as they do in vivo. A dense mucus layer is formed on the luminal epithelial surface that is impermeable to bacteria and acts a barrier to toxins. An oxygen gradient across the tissue mimic permits luminal culture of anaerobic bacteria while maintaining an oxygenated stem cell niche. This in vitro human colon crypt array replicates the architecture, luminal accessibility, tissue polarity, cell migration, and cellular responses of in vivo intestinal crypts. Intestinal biopsy samples can be used to populate these constructs to produce patient-specific tissues for personalized medicine and disease modeling. This bioanalytical platform is envisioned as a next-generation system for assay of microbiome-behavior, drug-delivery and toxin-interactions with the intestinal epithelia.
Upcoming seminars
February 3
Andrei Kozlov
Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London
February 10
Matthew Oberhardt
Program Director for Research Science, New York-Presbyterian Hospital
February 17
Nicholas J. Durr
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University
Designing medical devices with computational biophotonics
March 3
Nicole Steinmetz
Professor of Nanoengineering, Institute of Engineering in Medicine, UC San Diego
March 10 – Rising Star Lecture
Tim Downing
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, UC Irvine
March 31
Wilson Wong
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University
April 14
Cole DeForest
Associate Professor of Bioengineering & Chemical Engineering, University of Washington
April 28 – Distinguished Lecture in Bioengineering
Paula Hammond
Professor and Department Head, Chemical Engineering, MIT
Don’t miss our annual Distinguished Lecture in Bioengineering and Rising Star Lecture!
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