Abstract

Closing Keynote Presentation: Developing a Neurovascular Microphysiological System to Model Metastasis to the Brain and Alzheimer’s Disease

Roger Kamm, Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

System complexity is always an important consideration in the context of model design to recapitulate disease processes or for drug development, and few systems pose the array of potentially important cell types and system parameters as are found in the brain.  Over the past several years, we have sought to create models for a variety of applications in neurological function and disease starting with the blood brain barrier and cancer metastasis to the brain, and progressing to various manifestations of Alzheimer’s disease including cerebral amyloid angiopathy, amyloid beta plaque formation, and amyloid clearance from the brain via the meningeal lymphatics. In this talk, I will present the various stages of model development in terms of the essential cell types, the challenges/barriers that arise when adding complexity, and the ways in which each stage of the model is assessed. The emphasis will be on models that draw upon natural self-organization and self-assembly of a diverse cell population into a model with the morphological and functional characteristics of the healthy and diseased brain.