BIOENG 2821 - MICROPHYSIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS AND TISSUE MIMICRIES

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Microphysiological systems (MPS) are a growing area of focus for bioengineers as well as basic scientists, biopharmaceutical industry and regulatory agencies. They offer enormous potential in accelerating and lowering cost of preclinical drug development, allowing pathophysiological modeling of biological and disease processes in a human-relevant manner, and enabling translational discoveries to benefit the human health and the society. MPS are commonly referred to Organs-on-Chips, but also cover three-dimensional (3D)-Bioprinted Tissue and Organ Mimicries. Organs-on-Chips are biomimetic, microfluidic, cell culture devices created with microchip manufacturing methods that contain continuously perfused hollow microchannels inhabited by living tissue cells arranged to simulate organ-level physiology. By recapitulating the multicellular architectures, tissue-tissue interfaces, chemical gradients, mechanical cues, and vascular perfusion of the natural organ, these devices produce levels of tissue and organ functionality not possible with conventional 2D or 3D culture systems. They also enable high- resolution, real-time imaging and in vitro analysis of biochemical, genetic and metabolic activities of living human cells in a functional human tissue and organ context. 3D-Bioprinting is an additive manufacturing technique that is applied to biological materials and allows creation of cell-free and cell-laden scaffold for a diverse array of applications including regenerative medicine and preclinical pathophysiological modeling. In this course, we will cover advances made over the past two decades on these emerging technologies (Human Organs-on-Chips and 3D-Bioprinting). In addition, we will other methods of cellular, tissue and organ engineering that traditionally do not fall into MPS categories. These include decellularization and recellularization of natural scaffolds (e.g., heart, lung), stem cell-based tissue engineering approaches (e.g., iPSCs-derived tissues, spheroids, and organoids) and precision-cut organ slices (e.g., lung, liver). Moreover, this course includes workshops where trainees would have a chance to fabricate simple microfluidic organ-on-chip devices (to be carried out at Dr. Benam’s labs) and 3D-bioprint sample matrices (need to identify available resources in BIOE Department; if none is available, Dr. Benam will use inexpensive 3D bioprinters for training purpose at his labs).
Academic Career: Graduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Grad Letter Grade

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