James Hickman,
Professor, Nanoscience Technology, Chemistry, Biomolecular Science and Electrical Engineering,
University of Central Florida; Chief Scientist, Hesperos
James J. Hickman is the Founding Director of the NanoScience Technology Center and a Professor of Nanoscience Technology, Chemistry, Biomolecular Science, Biomedical Engineering, Material Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida. Previously, he held the position of the Hunter Endowed Chair in the Bioengineering Department at Clemson University. Dr. Hickman has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Chemistry. For the past thirty years, he has been studying the interaction of biological species with modified surfaces, first in industry and in the latter years in academia. While in industry he established one of the first bioelectronics labs in the country that focused on cell-based sensors and their integration with electronic devices and MEMS devices. He is interested in creating hybrid systems for biosensor and biological computation applications and the creation of functional in vitro systems for human body-on-a-chip applications. He has worked at NSF and DARPA in the area of biological computation. He is also the founder and current Chief Scientist of a biotechnology company, Hesperos, that is focusing on cell-based systems for drug discovery and toxicity. He has 166 publications and 20 book chapters, in addition to 34 issued patents out of 50 total patent applications. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) for 2 consecutive terms, the premier society for Biomedical Engineering of which he is a Fellow. He is also a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society (AVS) and National Academy of Inventors (NAI) as well as BioFlorida’s Researcher of the Year (2022). Dr. Hickman along with Dr. Michael Shuler, won the Lush Prize, in the Science Category, which Supports Animal Free Testing in 2015.
|
|
The Challenge in Building Phenotype Body-on-a-Chip Models for Toxicological and Efficacy Evaluations in Drug Discovery as well as Precision MedicineMonday, 26 September 2016 at 18:30 The utilization of human-on-a-chip or body-on-a-chip systems for toxicology and efficacy that ultimately should lead to personalized, precision medicine has been a topic that has received much attention recently. Key characteristic needed for these systems are the ability for organ-to-organ communication in a serum-free recirculating medium and incorporation of induced pluripotent stem cells that allow for understanding genetic variation as well as to construct systems utilizing stem cells from diseased patients and also from individuals. Additional characteristics that have been discussed are functional readouts that would enable non-invasive monitoring of organ health and viability for chronic studies that now are only possible in animals or humans at this time. In addition, in order to achieve wide spread adoption of these technologies they should also be low cost, easy to use and reconfigurable to allow flexibility for platforms to be examined with small variation. Our group, in collaboration with Dr. Michael Shuler from Cornell University, has been constructing these systems with up to 6 organs and have demonstrated long-term (>28 days) evaluation of drugs and compounds, that have shown similar response to results seen from clinical data or reports in the literature. We have accomplished the construction of these systems utilizing mostly 2D systems in serum-free medium with functional readouts that employs a pumpless platform that enables ease of use of these assays. Our group’s ability to control the interface between the biological and non-biological components in these systems has enabled the straightforward integration of multiple cell types in the same platform. Results with the functional multi-organ systems will be presented as well as results of five workshops held at NIH to explore what is needed for validation and qualification of these systems by the FDA and EMA.
|
Add to Calendar ▼SELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
