Monday, November 1, 1999
4:00 PM (refreshments 3:45)
Edgerton Hall, Room 34-101
EECS Colloquium
Abstract
Tissue engineering is a new area targeted towards the development of biological substitutes for implantation into the body and/or for extracorporeal use with the purpose being to replace, repair, or enhance tissue function in order to cure or treat a vast variety of diseases, such as tendon and ligament injury, Diabetes Mellitus, acute liver failure, burns, etc. Since tissue function is modulated by the spatial organization of cells on a sub-millimeter scale, artificial replication of cellular microstructures is important in creating engineered tissues. Microfabrication techniques together with surface chemistry approaches provide an excellent opportunity for engineers to create complex tissue structures with precisely controlled cell-extracellular matrix, cell-cell, and cell-soluble environment interactions at a micrometer scale.
This presentation will briefly review the early literature on the use of microfabrication approaches in cell biology and then focus on recent applications in tissue engineering. The ability to modulate function of multicellular systems by manipulation of the spatial relationship between cell populations will be shown to facilitate more effective in vitro reconstruction of liver, bone, and skin substitutes. Special emphasis will be placed on: (1) how engineered tissues can be used to enhance our understanding of structure-function relationship in tissues, and (2) areas where improvements/advances are needed on existing microfabrication techniques, including microfluidic systems and complex microtopographical features.
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Modified: Sep 20, 1999|
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