Talk

Monday, October 16, 2017

Speaker
Dimitrios Tzeranis
Affiliation
Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, FORTH, Greece
Title
Design of novel implants and organ-on-a-chip platforms based on porous collagen scaffolds
Location
Computer Science Dept., ground floor, room A2 (A115-A117)
Time
16:15 (sharp)
Language
English
Abstract

Porous collagen scaffolds (PCS) are among the few biomaterial-based treatments that have been approved by FDA, and are utilized clinically to induce regeneration in skin and peripheral nerves. Nevertheless, there is urgent clinical need to develop novel treatments that could induce regeneration in a wider variety organs or in more severe wounds. Accordingly, the first part of this talk will provide insights on the underlying mechanisms of PCS-induced regeneration, and recent results on combining PCS with neural stem cells for spinal cord regeneration. Furthermore, the proven biological activity of PCS and the ability to tune their physico-chemical properties suggests that they can provide key components of 3D cell culture systems The second part of this talk describes novel organ-on-a-chip device designs that enable high-throughput studies of cells inside tunable physiologically-relevant microenvironments and their application in drug screening and basic biological research.