Biomedical Engineering Seminar
Tuesday 11/2/2010, 4-5PM
Mount Hall (West Campus), Room 145
"Microtissues-On-A-Chip"
by
Daniel Gallego-Perez
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Biomedical Engineering, OSU
Abstract:
Guided assembly of microscale tissue-like subunits has great potential in areas like cellular and developmental biology, tissue engineering, cell therapy, and drug discovery. A number cell types have been reported to exhibit a more in vivo-like behavior when cultured as self-assembled 3D aggregates/clusters. As aggregate size and geometry are known to influence cell responses, the ability to control these parameters in a high throughput manner could be advantageous for the above-mentioned areas. In this work, micro- and nanofabrication techniques were combined to develop a platform for this purpose. Soft lithography was used to fabricate arrays of polymeric reservoirs with controlled geometry, chemistry, and dimensions at the microscale. These arrays were interfaced with electrospun polymer micro/nanoscale fibers. In vitro cell experiments were conducted with islet precursor cells, hepatocytes, cardiomyocytes, and embryonic stem cells (mouse and human). Our results show that the electrospun fibers provide a biomimetic environment upon which the cells preferentially anchored and formed clusters. Microtissue properties (e.g., size, geometry, functionality) were governed by both the geometric parameters of the microreservoirs and the topographic and chemical properties of the fibers. Preliminary functionality studies confirmed on-chip formation of insulin-expressing islet-like structures, and hepatocyte clusters with significantly higher metabolic activity compared to monolayer cultures. Our platform possesses several advantages over previously developed microwell-based systems for controlled microtissue formation, including fiber-based biomimicry and improved nutrient/waste exchange conditions.
Biographical Information: Daniel Gallego-Perez
Daniel Gallego-Perez received his B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Antioquia School of Engineering –EIA- (Envigado, Colombia) in 2003. Mr. Gallego worked as a Research Associate at EIA from 2004 to 2005, and in 2006, he joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The Ohio State University as a PhD student (expected graduation date: Winter – 2011). During this time, he has worked under the direct supervision of Dr. Derek Hansford (co-advised by Dr. Keith Gooch from 2009-2010), and has published 9 journal papers, and over 40 conference proceedings and abstracts. His research interests include Biomaterials, Micro/Nanotechnology and Tissue Engineering.
