Regenerative Medicine

Objective:

Regenerative Medicine’s aim is to to replace, engineer or regenerate human cells, tissues, and organs to restore or establish normal function. Michigan is unmatched in the broad reach of its research which includes the School of Medicine and the Colleges of Engineering and Pharmacy and as a result is a world leader in citations, grants received, and number of patents in this field.

What We Do:

Stem Cell Research
Development of Artificial organs and tissues
Development of decoys

Our students have opportunities to participate in NIH-sponsored training grants and programs in several fields, including:

Applications:

Organ Replacement
Drug Delivery
Injury Rehabilitation

Relevant Research from BME Faculty

Dr. Ariella Shikanov – Restoration of Ovarian Endocrine Function

Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a significant complication of cytotoxic treatments due to extreme ovarian sensitivity to chemotherapy and radiation. Currently, available treatment for POI is hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which delivers unregulated, non-physiological levels of estrogen that interferes with growth in peripubertal girls and predisposes them to cancer and thrombotic events. Implantation of donor ovarian tissue that responds to the circulating gonadotropins and secrets steroid hormones in response fills the existing gap, especially for girls undergoing puberty. We designed a novel immuno-isolation device that protects the implanted tissue from rejection, allows diffusion of nutrients, oxygen and hormones, and accommodates structural and functional changes of growing follicles.

Dr. Sriram Chandrasekaran – Discovering synergistic and antagonistic drug combinations for treating Mycobacterium tuberculosis

- Tuberculosis is the world’s deadliest bacterial infection, infecting 30% of all people world-wide and killing over a million persons each year. The prevalence of multi-drug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) exemplifies the challenge to identify novel combination therapies to counter antibiotic resistance and reduce treatment times.
- The objective of this project is to implement a computational tool called INDIGO (INferring Drug Interactions using chemo-Genomics and Orthology) to enable the discovery of effective antibiotic combinations in Mtb by leveraging chemogenomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics data in Mtb, Mycobacterium smegmatis as well as from model organisms such as E. coli.
- The INDIGO approach can accurately and expeditiously screen potent antibiotic combinations from thousands of possibilities, and identify antibiotic combinations that interact synergistically or antagonistically, as well as predict how antibiotics prescribed in combinations will inhibit bacterial growth.
- The ultimate goal is to use INDIGO to help clinicians quickly assess the likelihood of success of new anti-TB drug combinations.

Dr. Jan Stegemann – Fabrication and Characterization of composite materials

The Stegemann laboratory focuses on how cells interact with the 3D protein matrix around them and how these interactions can be used to develop better biomaterials and engineered tissues. The main application areas are in cardiovascular and orthopaedic tissues.

We have developed and characterized a range of pure and composite biomaterials based on naturally derived proteins and polysaccharides. These materials are designed to have desirable biochemical, physical, and mechanical properties, which can be used to guide cell function. We also study structure-function relationships in such composite materials.