Therapeutic/Technology: Technology
Development of 3D Bioprinting Techniques using Human Embryonic Stem Cells Derived Cardiomyocytes for Cardiac Tissue Engineering
Heart, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases are responsible for ~17 million deaths per year globally and this number is predicted to reach 23.3 million by 2030. Cardiovascular diseases impose a staggering annual cost of $300 billion on the U.S. health care system. Heart transplantation is the ultimate solution to end-stage heart failure. However, a major […]
Optimizing the differentiation and expansion of microglial progenitors from human pluripotent stem cells for the study and treatment of neurological disease.
Microglia are a type of immune cell within the brain that profoundly influence the development and progression of many neurological disorders. Microglia also inherently migrate toward areas of brain injury, making them excellent candidates for use in cell transplantation therapies. Despite the widely accepted importance of microglia in neurological disease, methods to produce microglia from […]
Multimodal platform combining optical and ultrasonic technologies for in vivo nondestructive evaluation of engineered vascular tissue constructs
Current vascular replacement materials are far from ideal, with all available biomaterials exhibiting significant clinical complications. The development of novel biocompatible decellularized vascular grafts holds great promise for functional restoration of vascular tissues suffering from trauma or disease. However, the need for destructive analysis at multiple in-vitro and in-vivo time points creates a costly critical […]
Site-specific gene editing in hematopoietic stem cells as an anti-HIV therapy
The overall goal of this proposal is to develop new methods and technologies to improve our ability to engineer hematopoietic stem cells. These are the adult stem cells found in the bone marrow that give rise to all of the components of the blood and immune systems. Being able to engineer these cells provides potential […]
Development of a scalable, practical, and transferable GMP-compliant suspension culture-based differentiation process for cardiomyocyte production from human embryonic stem cells.
As ongoing CIRM-funded development of regenerative medicine (RM) progresses, the demand for increasing numbers of pluripotent stem cells and their differentiated derivatives has also increased. We have established a scalable suspension culture system for the production of large quantities of hESC for banking and to seed production of a number of regenerative medicine cell types, […]
Injectable Macroporous Matrices to Enhance Stem Cell Engraftment and Survival
Despite the great promise stem cells hold for regenerative medicine, the efficacy of stem cell-based therapies is greatly limited by poor cell engraftment and survival. To overcome this major bottleneck, the goal of this proposal is to validate the efficacy of novel microribbon (µRB)-based scaffolds for cell delivery. These scaffolds combine the injectability and cell […]
Engineered Biomaterials for Scalable Manufacturing and High Viability Implantation of hPSC-Derived Cells to Treat Neurodegenerative Disease
Cell replacement therapies (CRTs) have considerable promise for addressing unmet medical needs, including incurable neurodegerative diseases. However, several bottlenecks hinder CRTs, especially the needs for improved cell manufacturing processes and enhanced cell survival and integration after implantation. Engineering synthetic biomaterials that present biological signals to support cell expansion, differentiation, survival, and/or integration may help overcome […]
Macaca mulatta as advanced model for predictive preclinical testing of engineered cardiac autografts and allografts
Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the US. Heart muscle injured during a heart attack does not regenerate, and the resulting damage leads to heart failure, which inflicts almost 6 million people in the US alone. Recently, several studies have shown that direct injection of stem cell-derived heart cells may offer […]
A Chromatin Context Tool for Predicting iPS Lineage Predisposition and Tissue Graftability
Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are cells derived from skin that closely resemble embryonic stem (ES) cells and can be coaxed into many different types of cells such as nerve cells, heart cells, liver cells, and also back to skin cells. One major bottleneck in the field is our ability to coax the cells into […]
A suite of engineered human pluripotent stem cell lines to facilitate the generation of hematopoietic stem cells
Our goal is to develop tools that address major bottlenecks that have prevented the generation of blood forming stem cells in culture for therapeutic use. To help overcome these bottlenecks, we will generate a suite of human embryonic stem cell reporter lines that can be used to monitor key milestones in blood stem cell development. […]