Topic: Microscale bioengineering of 3D cell microenvironment on a chip for basic and translational researches

Time:2015年6月4日（周四）上午9:30-10:30

Venue:行政楼, 108会议室

Speaker:Pu Chen, Postdoctoral Scholar,

Bio-Acoustic MEMS in Medicine (BAMM) Lab, Canary Center for Early Cancer Detection,

Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Stanford University

Biography

Pu Chen is a postdoctoral scholar at Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection, Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Stanford University. Before moving to Stanford, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan in 2011. His current research interests are in the field of microscale technologies for bottom-up tissue engineering and point-of-care diagnostics. He published more than 20 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, and wrote two book chapters. He is an owner of four issued or provisional patents. He was a recipient of the Best Poster Award of 2014 Materials Research Society, Boston, USA, 2014.

Abstract

Cells in biological tissues are living in a highly complex 3D local microenvironment comprising spatiotemporally heterogeneous physical, chemical cues and cell populations. Interplays between cells and their microenvironment not only regulate various cell behaviors but also affect diverse microphysiological events in the biological system across multiple scales from the molecular level, the organ level and up to the whole organism level. The ability to bioengineer 3D cell microenvironment in vitro with controlled composition potentially facilitate both fundamental biological research and translational applications. Here, we present several approaches that enable bioengineering well controlled 3D cell microenvironment by bringing together lab on a chip, microfluidics, acoustics, magnetics, microscale assembly, biomaterials and bioengineering principles. Particularly, we demonstrate generation of tissue (e.g. liver) with high cell packing density and controlled geometry using liquid-based templated assembly and scaffold-free cell spheroid assembly, rapid formation of multilayer neural construct using bulk acoustic levitation, micropillar-induced nuclear deformation for distinguishing cancer cell types from normal cell types, phenotypic transition of esophageal cancer cells from epithelial to mesenchymal by microfluidic shear device. We envision that these tools will enable broad applications in tissue engineering, personalized medicine, stem cell therapy and drug discovery and reveal complex interplays between cells and their local niches.