Roger E. De Filippo's interest is in Tissue Engineering and Cell Therapeutics using Stem Cell and Regenerative Science Applications. Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are multidisciplinary fields involving biology, medicine, and engineering aimed at restoring, maintaining, or enhancing tissue and organ function with compatible biologic replacements that are either created in the laboratory or bioengineered in concert with the body . In addition to having a therapeutic application, where the tissue is either grown in a patient or outside the patient and transplanted, tissue engineering can have diagnostic applications where the tissue is made in vitro and the in vitro model tested in a biologic situations. Further more these in vitro systems can assist in discovering critical pathways of development and organogenesis which may help to improve bioengineering technologies aimed at creating complex organs. The foundation of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine for either therapeutic or diagnostic applications is the ability to exploit living cells in a variety of ways and create biocompatible tissues and organs for translational means in the clinic.
Roger De Filippo's lab has extensive experience in the area of Tissue Engineering applications. They have been successful at recreating a variety of organs applied to in vivo models using both collagen and synthetic based scaffolds seeded with autologous cells. These biologic structures include bladder, urethra, and vaginal constructs that have been extensively studied with both in vitro and in vivo systems with promising results. They have expanded this knowledge into studying virtually every tissue type in the body including skeletal and smooth muscle, endothelial (vascular) cells, adipose (fat) tissue, bone, liver, and kidney to name just a few. Their mission is to continue refining these technologies so that bioengineered products evolve to become a viable option for patients in the future.
Another major area of focus in Roger DeFilippo's laboratory is in the area of stem cell research in conjunction with tissue engineering and regenerative applications. For the past 2 years they have been investigating a very novel stem cell population isolated from amniotic fluid. In particular these stem cells have all of the characteristics of traditional embryonic stem cells. They express stem cell markers (OCT 4 and SSEA4), are clonogenic, preserve telomeric length (immortal), and are capable of differentiating into tissue from all three germ layers. They are one of only 2 laboratories in the country using this population of stem cells in this capacity. They are presently applying these stem cells in laboratory models aimed and regenerating kidney tissue. More
James Dunn, PhD obtained the B.S. degree in Biology and Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. He then completed his M.D. and Ph.D. trainings in the Division of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and M.I.T. Subsequently, he spent seven years in general surgical residency at the UCLA School of Medicine and two years in pediatric surgical fellowship at the Riley Hospital for Children. In the last five years, he has served as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Surgery at UCLA. Dr. Dunn’s research interests are in the area of tissue engineering of internal organs, including the intestine, the liver, and the adrenal cortex. More
Daniel Farkas, PhD was trained in Theoretical Physics in Romania, and holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics and Biochemistry from the Weizmann Institute in Israel, where he received a number of honors (Yashinsky Outstanding Student Prize, EMBO fellowship, UNESCO scholarship, Aharon Katchalsky-Katzir Award). He came to the United States as a Fulbright scholar (also holding a Dr. Chaim Weizmann fellowship), conducted research at Univ. of California San Diego and Univ. of Washington, Seattle, and was also a Fulbright lecturer at Univ. of California Berkeley.
After junior faculty appointments in US and Israel, and a brief foray into the high tech industry, he joined Carnegie Mellon University as Associate Director and then Director of the Center for Light Microscope Imaging and Biotechnology (1992-2002), a National Science and Technology Center that won the Smithsonian Award for Science in 1996. Additionally, in 1998 he joined the University of Pittsburgh where he held appointments as Professor Bioengineering and Pathology, Director of the BioImaging Laboratories, as well as core faculty positions in the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Univ. of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Currently, in addition to his main positions in Los Angeles, he is also Adjunct Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, and Associate Director of the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative since the inception (1995) of this regional non-profit organization, recently named the National Tissue Engineering Center.
Dr. Farkas’s scientific interests center on the investigation of the living state with light, for uses in biology, biotechnology, bioengineering and medicine. Optical bioimaging and biophotonics (particularly by automated microscopy, spectral and molecular imaging, coherence-based methods and endoscopy) is the main technology area currently pursued in his labs, the application fields ranging from molecular and developmental biology to transplantation immunology, neurosciences, cardiology and tissue engineering. This work was described in more than 100 publications, and supported by more than $35M dollars in peer-reviewed funding. Minimally invasive surgery, innovative cancer research, and regenerative medicine, pursued at the mesoscopic level constitute his current focus; in these application domains, his group’s ability to monitor events non-invasively in vivo significantly increased relevance, in studies of 3-D tissue architecture and physiology, cancer detection, stem cell engraftment, tissue oxygenation, and transplant rejection. The main aim is to bring these new approaches, via translational research, into the operating room of the future.
Dr. Farkas has chaired more than a dozen international scientific meetings, including the recent United Engineering Foundation Conference on Advances in Optics for Biotechnology, Medicine and Surgery and the Keystone Symposium on Optical Bioimaging: Applications to Biology and Medicine. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Biomedical Optics Society, and series editor for Methods in Bioengineering (Springer). He was/is also Associate Editor of Cytometry and of Molecular Imaging, on the Editorial Boards of Journal of Biomedical Optics, oemagazine, Current Analytical Chemistry and Journal of Microscopy, and has served on more than a dozen NSF panels and NIH Study Sections, and on advisory boards to several national research centers, companies and the Deutsche Forshungsgemeinschaft. His work was recognized with the Automated Imaging Association Award for Scientific Application (1994) and the Sylvia Sorkin Greenfield Award from the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (2002).
Dr. Farkas was also involved in a number of successful high-tech startups, and is currently founder and chairman of ChromoDynamics, Inc. and of Spectral Molecular Imaging, Inc.
Rocio Sierra-Honigmann, MD obtained her MD degree from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City in 1980. She then obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1992 from the Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados having done her thesis work at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Later she continued in a postdoctoral position also at Johns Hopkins in the Laboratory of Dr. Patrick Murphy. In the spring of 1993 she joined the Laboratory of Dr. Jordan Pober at Yale University in New Heaven, where she is was an Associate Research Scientist until 2000. She established her own laboratory as a Research Scientist in Los Angeles at the Cedars-Sinai Research Institute where she is the Director of Engineered Wound Repair Laboratory. Her studies have focused on angiogenic and healing-promoting activities of the cytokine Leptin. She is currently also conducting studies on the use of human embryonic stem cells to engineer blood vessels for therapeutic revascularization of ischemic tissues. more
Chester Koh, PhD is currently Assistant Professor of Urology at the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles/ Saban Research Instituteat USC Keck School of Medicine. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric urology and in stem cell biology and tissue engineering/ regenerative medicine at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School and at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Koh’s lab is part of the Developmental Biology program at the Saban Research Institute at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.
The field of tissue engineering combines the principles of cell biology, materials science, and engineering to construct biological substitutes that will restore and maintain normal function in target tissues. For the replacement of damaged or diseased tissue, most current strategies for tissue engineering depend upon a sample of autologous cells from the diseased organ of the host. However, in the setting of end-stage organ failure, a tissue biopsy may not yield enough normal cells for expansion and transplantation. In other instances, primary autologous human cells may not be adequately expanded from a particular organ for replacement purposes. In these situations, stem cells are envisioned as a viable source of pluripotent cells from which the desired tissue can be derived. Combining regenerative medicine techniques with this potentially endless source of versatile cells could lead to novel sources of replacement organs. Dr. Koh's laboratory will investigate the application of embryonic stem cells and alternative sources of stem cells toward the creation of bioengineered tissue in the lower urinary tract that will hopefully avoid the complications associated with current replacement techniques. More
Elizabeth Orwin's laboratory at Harvey Mudd College is focused on the development of a tissue-engineered corneal stromal equivalent. We have developed a model growth system for culture of corneal cells in a collagen matrix, which can be used to study wound-healing mechanisms in the cornea. With this system we can monitor the impact of growth factors, extracellular matrix interactions, and mechanical signals on cells in an environment which mimics that of the natural cornea. Tissue developed using this model can be used in experiments aimed at understanding wound-healing in the cornea and as a first step toward an artificial cornea. This project is multi-faceted; we are using a variety of techniques in a multidisciplinary approach to this complicated problem. In addition to designing our bioreactor system, we have been working on creating an oriented matrix structure which has the appropriate mechanical properties, developing techniques to assess protein and mRNA expression in our cells under various culture conditions, and imaging techniques to visualize phenotypic changes in our tissue system over time in sterile culture. The cornea group at HMC consists of undergraduate students and faculty from engineering, biology, chemistry and physics.
Ching-An Peng, PhD is an associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at USC. He earned his B.S., Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, 1985, M.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, 199, Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan, 1995, Post-Doc Fellow, StemCell Technologies, 1997. Dr. Peng's interest is the design and synthesis of biomaterials used for drug and gene delivery as well as cellular and tissue engineering. Ongoing research involves fluoroalkylated biomaterials, perfluoropentane Microbubble, and alginate nanosphere More
Michael Shaw, PhD received a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, an M.S. in Ceramic Engineering from the Ohio State University, and a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He performed his post-doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge, England. He is an Associate Professor, Bioengineering & Physics and Director, Center for Integrated Science and Bioengineering at California Lutheran University. Prior to his current appointment, he was Manager, Design and Reliability Department, Rockwell Scientific Company (formerly Rockwell Science Center), where he coordinated the activities of a group of approximately 15 research scientists engaged in development of new technologies for commercialization, in addition to research for US Government basic and applied science funding agencies. His current research focuses on the processes and mechanisms by which various cells and tissue scaffold materials respond to a variety of environmental cues. He actively engages undergraduate students in his work, and is currently working with a team of eight CLU undergraduates in collaborative research with Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles; UCLA Department of Biomedical Engineering; USC Keck School of Medicine, the LA County Hospital Burn Center and Virginia. He recently earned the award of Senior Member, IEEE, and is Vice-Chair of the Buenaventura IEEE Chapter that received the 2005 Outstanding IEEE-Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Chapter Award. He has received several awards for his publications and presentations, and has over 45 publications.
Dr. Bill Tawil obtained his Bachelor degree in Biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. He then completed his Master and Doctorate degrees in Neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal under the supervision of Dr. Salvatore Carbonate studying the expression and function of adhesion cell surface receptors (integrins) in the Central Nervous System and during tumor metastasis. Subsequently, he spent four years of postdoctoral training at the Center for Cancer Research at MIT under the supervision of Dr. Richard Hynes investigating cell adhesion during the cell cycle. In the last ten years, as a Scientist and a Senior Scientist at U.S. Surgical Corporation and recently at Baxter BioSurgery, he has worked in the field of Tissue Regeneration examining products (synthetic and biologics) that successfully deliver bioactive substances and cells to enhance healing in soft and hard tissue defects. He is presently a Director of Global Strategy at Baxter BioSurgery responsible for scientific initiatives related to tissue engineering. He is also responsible for establishing collaborations between Baxter BioSurgery and other companies and academic institutions. Dr. Tawil is also an Adjunct Professor in the Bioengineering department at UCLA where he teaches and performs research in tissue engineering supported by an NIH grant. He is on the Scientific Advisory Committee for various societies including the California Tissue Engineering Meeting and the Los Angeles Tissue Engineering Initiative meeting. Dr. Tawil believes strongly that the interaction between academia and industry is an expedient and successful way to get products to the patient.
Tai – Lan Tuan, PhD is concentring her research in Tissue repair aprocesses and embryonicmorphogenesis and developmental tissue regeneration. The long-term goal of her research is to elucidate the cellular and molecular basis of excess scar formation during tissue and organ injury repair. Wound repair is accomplished through concerted events involving various cell types, extra cellular matrix (ECM) components, cytokines, and other soluble mediators, such as proteases and their inhibitors. The dynamic interaction and feedback control among participating components determine the outcome of wound repair. Research in progress in the laboratory includes: 1. Investigation of ECM-mediated modulation of cellular gene expression in fibroblasts, 2. Keloid Pathogenesis, and 3. Fetal Scarless Skin Wound Healing. More
Ivan Vesely, Ph.D., is the director of Cardiothoracic Surgery Research at The Saban Research Institute of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, and at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. He is the H. Russell Smith Foundation Endowed Chair of Cardiothoracic Research at CHLA, and professor of cardiothoracic surgery at USC.
Dr. Vesely received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering (1983), and a Ph.D. in biophysics (1987), both from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. He began his research into the structure/function relationship of heart valves in the late 80's in Canada, came to the US in 1994 and spent the subsequent 9 years at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. In the start of 2004, he joined USC and CHLA.
He runs a large, well funded laboratory at the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, with interests in valve testing, computational modeling and tissue engineering. The tissue engineering research is focused on growing the individual building blocks of a heart valve - collagen and elastin, the fibrous proteins found in all connective tissues. His laboratory has succeeded in growing sheets of elastin and small fiber bundles or tendons of collagen, the latter of which may eventually prove helpful to adults with mitral valve disease. His research interests also involve developmental biology and stem cell biology, as technologies from these areas will have impact on the ability to regenerate connective tissues.
As the Director of Cardiothoracic Surgery Research, his immediate aims are to grow the research group with new faculty with research interests in regenerative medicine of the cardiovascular system. Applications can be sent to: heartvalvelab@yahoo.com
Benjamin Wu, D.D.S., Ph.D., received his D.D.S. from the University of Pacific, his specialty certificate in advanced prosthodontics and complete oral rehabilitation from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prof. Wu is currently Vice Chair of the UCLA Department of Bioengineering, with multiple joint appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Division of Advanced Prosthodontics, Biomaterials, and Hospital Dentistry at UCLA. Benefiting from his unique perspective as a practicing clinician and biomaterials scientist, his research brings to bear bioengineering approach to rebuild lost function in a variety of hard and soft tissues. Several underlying themes that thread his various projects together include 1) learn how nature heals wounds and tissue defects; 2) copy nature and engineer biomimetic microenvironments to promote repair; 3) investigate the mechanisms by which progenitor cells interact with the engineered microenvironments; and 4) investigate the mechanism by which biomolecules interact with various scaffolding materials. The multidisciplinary nature of his research is reflected by his role as Co-Director of the Weintraub Center for Reconstructive Biotechnology, and his membership in the Brain Research Institute, the California NanoSystems Institute, and Cadiovascular Stem Cell Research Center at UCLA.
