BME Seminar Series: David Shreiber, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineeirng, Rutgers School of Engineering

Dr. Shreiber will present "Where do we go from here? Engineering approaches for directing neural tissue regeneration"

Abstract

Following brain, spinal cord, or peripheral nerve trauma, injury to axons interrupts the primary lines of communication for the nervous system and is responsible for a significant portion of the resulting functional deficits. Accordingly, extensive efforts have been aimed at improving the regenerative environment to accelerate axon regeneration. However, in many instances it is not enough to accelerate regrowth. Without some directional cues, regeneration is often stunted. Moroever, functional regeneration frequently relies on axons to reconnect with correct synapses or reinnervate appropriate end targets. As such, the field of neural tissue engineering is increasingly working to add specificity to regenerative technology. I will present work focused on providing directional cues to regenerating axons and developing systems and materials to understand the choices they make. I will review our approaches to generate spatial gradients of biomaterial stiffness and bioactivity in type I collagen gels to enhance the directional growth of regenerating neurites. I will also present results from our biomaterial approach to improve functional recovery following peripheral nerve injury in vivo by including specific cues that enhance motor axon targeting accuracy. Finally, I will discuss our development of a photo-labile collagen-based material – collagen methacrylamide – that can be photo-crosslinked after self-assembly into a fibrillar gel, and I will present some unusual properties that the material demonstrated during our characterization.

Brief biography

David Shreiber is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers, and is currently the Director of the Joint Rutgers/Robert Wood Johnson Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Shreiber received a BS degree in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Cornell in 1991, an MSE in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, and a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998. After post doctoral studies in Chemical Engineering & Materials Science at the University of Minnesota, David joined the faculty at Rutgers in 2002. His research spans a variety of fields including brain and spinal cord injury biomechanics, neural tissue engineering, acupuncture, and electroporation. He has received numerous awards from private foundations and state and federal agencies, such as the Whitaker Foundation, the New Jersey Commissions on Brain Injury Research and Spinal Cord Research, the NIH, the CDC, and the NSF, including the prestigious NSF CAREER award for Young Investigators, and he currently leads the NSF-REU site in Cellular Bioengineering at Rutgers.  In 2012, he was a recipient of the inaugural Rutgers School of Engineering Outstanding Faculty Award, which recognizes excellence in scholarship, teaching, and service to the Rutgers Engineering Community and beyond.