Tools for engineering artificial cellular microenvironments
Event details
| Date | 19.12.2013 |
| Hour | 11:00 › 12:00 |
| Speaker |
Prof. Roman Truckenmüller Bio: Assistant Professor - MIRA Institute (Institute for Biomedical Technologies and Technical Medicine) University of Twente, The Netherlands Roman Truckenmüller holds an engineering diploma and a doctorate in engineering science from the Universities of Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, Germany, respectively. After working as a development engineer for Siemens, Erlangen, Germany, he worked at the Institute for Microstructure Technology (IMT) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. At IMT, he carried out his doctoral project on fabrication of three-dimensional microstructures from polymer membranes, worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the area of X-ray lithography and headed a research group dealing with membrane-based microfluidic sensors and actuators from polymers. Since 2007, he works at the Department of Tissue Regeneration of the University of Twente (UT), The Netherlands. In 2010, he was appointed assistant professor at the MIRA Institute for Biomedical Technology and Technical Medicine of the UT. Roman Truckenmüller’s research at MIRA focuses on micro- and nanoscale three-dimensional polymer film forming and functionalisation technologies and their biomedical applications, with a particular focus on engineering complex artificial cellular microenvironments using the aforementioned technologies. |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
The fate of cells is closely related to the nature of their physical, chemical and biological environment. Creating artificial cellular microenvironments, for example, in the microwells of biochips or on the surfaces of macroscopic implants allows to control the fate of seeded, present or recruited (stem) cells concerning, among others, their attachment, migration, proliferation or differentiation. This can result in more relevant tissue, organ or corresponding disease models in vitro or in biomaterial-cell or -tissue interfaces with enhanced host integration and long-term functionality in vivo. The talk will deal with tools for engineering artificial cellular microenvironments ranging from anatomically curved substrates for (for instance, endothelial) cell monolayers over tailored microwells for three-dimensional (3D) cell aggregates to nanowire cages for single cells. Potential applications of these technical 3D cell interfaces are in fields such as stem cell research, developmental biology, cancer research, pharmaceutical or toxicological screening, regenerative medicine or bioartificial organs (on chip). Micro- and nanotechnologies allow decorating the surfaces and the bulk of the materials used to fabricate the artificial microenvironments on a cellular, subcellular or molecular range. Furthermore, these technologies enable the easy generation of libraries of arrayed microenvironments with, for example, different overall sizes and shapes, or arrangements and densities of integrated micro- or nanoscale features such as corresponding surface topographies or chemical domains as instructive cues. The systematic study or screening of the cellular responses to these designed substrate-bound environmental factors can help to better understand the influencing key parameters or to find the ‘optimal’ conditions for a certain cell culture or tissue engineering application.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
- This event is internal