Microengineering the Cellular Environment for Tissue Engineering

Microengineering the Cellular Environment for Tissue Engineering

Date: 10/19/2007
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: 320 Curry Student Center
Speaker: Dr. Ali Khademhosseini, Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), Harvard-MIT

Micro- and nanoscale technologies are emerging as powerful tools to control the interaction between cells and their surroundings for biological studies, tissue engineering, diagnostics and cell-based screening. In our lab we have developed various approaches at the interface between materials science, engineering and biology to control and study the cellular microenvironment with emphasis on controlling stem cell differentiation and generating 3D tissues. In this talk I will present our work in controlling the cell-microenvironment interactions in 2D and 3D. To control cell migration and to restrict cell or colony size, cells and proteins were patterned using numerous methods based on micropatterning of polymers and by using stencils. To control cell-cell contact, we have developed methods based on layer-by-layer deposition of ionic biopolymers or surface topography to generate patterned co-cultures. In addition, we have developed methods of generating tissue-like structures with biomimetic microvasculature and complexity by using microengineered cell-laden hydrogels with controllable biochemical and architectural features.