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The mission of the newly
established Center for Engineering Cells and Regeneration
(CECR) is to develop the science and technology behind engineering
cells and tissues.
Cellular Engineering,
Tissue Engineering, and Regenerative Medicine are all part of a
new science that seeks to understand how cells, tissues, and
organs undergo adaptive or maladaptive responses to stimuli whose
effects may be beneficial (e.g., in natural or engineered
nutritive microenvironments) or harmful (e.g. in aging, stress, or
injury). This new area clearly is not a single discipline. Rather, it
requires the integration of engineering, material science, biology,
chemistry, physics, and medicine. This multidisciplinary approach
pushes the frontiers of our understanding of cells as control
systems, how the individual subcomponents can
be retooled to alter cell function, and how cells interact
with each other and their microenvironment to form tissues.
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CECR builds on three pillars of excellence,
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CECR fosters interactions between these
disciplines within the Schools of Engineering, Arts and
Sciences, Medicine, Dentistry, and Veterinary Medicine,
and establishes new collaborative interactions amongst these
participants. |
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EVENT Spotlight
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The First Annual
CECR Symposium
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Over
90 faculty members, students and fellows attended The Center for
Engineering Cells and Regeneration's first annual Symposium, held
Monday, December 14, 2009 in Wu and Chen Auditorium, Levine Hall.
Keynote
speaker Donald E. Ingber, M.D PhD spoke on the molecular and mechanical
basis of force transduction in cells, and the role of this
understanding in engineering cells for regeneration, as well as his
vision of the importance and opportunities of the engineering/biology
interface.
The
Symposium featured 27 poster presentations by graduate students and
post-doctoral fellows and successfully drew participants from across
the University who are either engineers who have some exposure to
biology or biologists who have some quantitative focus.
This event, and more like it to follow,
will further the center's mission of assembling a community at Penn
which will cross-pollinate around the idea of scientists, engineers,
and inventors tying to medicine and cell biology to solve major
problems in health and disease.
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Event Highlights
(click to enlarge) |
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Click Here for a full recap
of
the 1st Annual CECR Symposium
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If you are a faculty member or
student interested in participating in similar
events, become a CECR member today!
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RECENT NEWS
- Casim
Sarkar selected as a participant in the 2009 National Academies Keck
Futures Initiative conference, Synthetic Biology: Building on Nature's
Inspiration.
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Jason
Burdick awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
- Rob
Mauck awarded the Y.C. Fung Young Investigator Award from the American
Society for Mechanical Engineers.
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Jason
Burdick selected as a participant in the National Academy of
Engineering, US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium.
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RECENT
PUBLICATIONS
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Palani
S. and Sarkar C.A. Integrating Extrinsic and
Intrinsic Cues into a Minimal Model of Lineage Commitment for
Hematopoietic Progenitors. PLoS Computational Biology, in
press (2009).
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Guilak
F., Cohen D.M., Estes B.T., Gimble J.M., Liedtke W., Chen, C.S. (2009) Control of stem cell
fate by physical interactions with the extracellular matrix. Cell Stem
Cell, 5: 17-26.
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Legant
W.R., Pathak A., Yang M.T., Deshpande V.S., McMeeking R.M., Chen, C.S. (2009) Microfabricated tissue
gauges to measure and manipulate forces from 3D microtissues. Proc
Nat Acad Sci, 106: 10097-10102.
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Mauck
R.L., Baker BM,
Nerurkar NL, Burdick
J.A., Li WJ, Tuan
R.S., Elliott D.M. (2009) Engineering on the Straight and Narrow: the
Mechanics of Nanofibrous Assemblies for Fiber-Reinforced Tissue
Regeneration. Tissue Engineering, Part B: Reviews,
15(2):171-93.
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Chung
C., Beecham M., Mauck
R.L., Burdick J.A. (2009) The Influence of
Degradation Characteristics of Hyaluronic Acid Hydrogels on in Vitro
Neocartilage Formation by Mesenchymal Stem Cells. Biomaterials,
30:4287-4296
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Huang A.H., Farrell M.J., and Mauck R.L., "Mechanics and Mechanobiology
of Mesenchymal Stem Cells-Based Engineered Cartilage", Journal of
Biomechanics, in press (2010).
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Chung
C. and Burdick J.A., Influence of 3D Hyaluronic Acid
Microenvironments on Mesenchymal Stem Cell Chondrogenesis (2009), Tissue
Engineering A, 15:243-254.
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Khetan
S., Katz J.S.,
Burdick J.A,,
Sequential Crosslinking to Control Cellular Spreading in
3-Dimensional Hydrogels (2009), Soft Matter, 5:1601-1606.
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Marklein
R.A., Burdick
J.A., Controlling
Stem Cell Fate with Material Design, Advanced Materials, in
press (2009).
- Thomas S.N., Tong Z., Stebe K.J. and Konstantopoulos K., Identification,
characterization and utilization of tumor selection ligands in the
design of cancer diagnostics, Biorheology 46 (2009) 207?225
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