简介: |
简介:
Cellular medicine holds enormous potential to treat many challenging diseases and biomaterials play an important role in many aspects of cellular medicine including cell expansion, engineering and delivery. In this talk, I will discuss our recent efforts in developing novel biomaterials for the aforementioned three aspects of cellular medicine. First, I will describe compartmentalized hydrogel microcapsules for scalable organoid culture. Organoid technology has broad applications in disease modeling and cell therapy. However, the manufacturing of organoids at a large scale has been challenging. Using small intestinal organoids as a model, I will show how advanced microcapsule designs may facilitate the scale-up of organoid culture. Second, I will describe a biomaterial approach to engineer iPS cell-derived hepatocytes and improve their engraftment in immunocompetent mice for potential applications in personalized medicine. Previously, it has been challenging to obtain functional hepatic engraftment of these cells with most studies having been done in immunodeficient animals. I will show how a 3D cell co-aggregation strategy combined with cell encapsulation using biocompatible hydrogel capsules improved the maturation and engraftment of iPS cell-derived hepatocytes. Lastly, I will discuss some new biomaterials that are under development in our lab for therapeutic cell delivery. I will show a particular application in the treatment of type 1 diabetes.
Bio Minglin Ma is an assistant professor at the Biological and Environmental Engineering Department of Cornell University. He received his PhD degree from Chemical Engineering of MIT with Dr. Gregory Rutledge and worked at General Electric Global Research Center. Prior to joining Cornell in 2013, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Robert Langer at MIT Koch Institute. His current research interest is to develop advanced biomaterials for biophysical and translational applications. Specific examples include biomaterial-enabled studies of collective cell behaviors and new encapsulation biomaterials for cellular medicine and disease modeling. His work was recently recognized by an American Diabetes Association Junior Faculty Award, a 3M Nontenured Faculty Award, a Hartwell Foundation Individual Biomedical Research Award, and a Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Young Innovator Award. |