Kambez Benam,
Assistant Professor of Medicine,
University of Colorado, School of Medicine
Dr. Benam received his B.Sc. with First-Class Honours in Pharmacology from Newcastle University in 2007, and his D.Phil. in Clinical Medicine (Immunology) from the University of Oxford in 2011. His doctoral work focused on host-pathogen interactions, pulmonary mucosal immunity, and development of mild and highly pathogenic viral infection models. At Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, he helped design and development a ‘human lung small airway-on-a-chip’ to model debilitating human lung disorders such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and respiratory viral infections in order to advance drug development strategies. He also engineered a microfluidically coupled multi-compartment system to ‘breathe’ whole smoke from tobacco-related products, electronic cigarettes or any other aerosolized compound/drug in and out of small airway chip microchannels as occurs in vivo (‘breathing-smoking airway-on-a-chip’). He has received multiple awards including Baxter and Lush Young Investigator Awards and his work has been covered extensively by press. He is co-inventor on six pending patent applications and multiple reports of invention. Dr. Benam is now Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado, School of Medicine.
Microengineered Systems to Recreate Human Lung Pathophysiology
Tuesday, 11 July 2017 at 14:30
Add to Calendar ▼2017-07-11 14:30:002017-07-11 15:30:00Europe/LondonMicroengineered Systems to Recreate Human Lung PathophysiologySELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
Development of new therapeutics for pulmonary disorders, and advancement in our understanding of inhalational toxico-pathology have been hindered by challenges to study organ-level complexities of human lung in vitro. Moreover, clinical relevance of widely used animal models of respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which poses a huge public health burden, is questionable. Here, we applied a tissue microengineering approach to create a ‘human lung small airway-on-a-chip’ that supports full differentiation of a pseudostratified mucociliary bronchiolar epithelium from normal or diseased donors underlined by a functional microvascular endothelium. Small airway chips lined with COPD epithelia recapitulated features of the disease including selective cytokine hypersecretion, increased neutrophil recruitment, and clinical exacerbations by exposure to pathogens. Using this robust in vitro approach, it was possible to detect synergistic tissue-tissue communication, identify new biomarkers of disease exacerbation, and measure responses to anti-inflammatory compounds that inhibit cytokine-induced recruitment of circulating neutrophils. Importantly, by connecting the small airway chip to a custom-designed electromechanical instrument that ‘breathes’ whole cigarette smoke in and out of the chip microchannels, we successfully recreated smoke-induced oxidative stress, identified new ciliary micropathologies, and discovered unique COPD-specific molecular signatures. Additionally, this platform revealed a subtle ciliary damage triggered by acute exposure to electronic cigarette. Thus, the human small airway-on-a-chip offers a powerful complement to animal models for studying human lung pathophysiology.
Add to Calendar ▼2017-07-10 00:00:002017-07-11 00:00:00Europe/LondonOrgan-on-a-Chip and Body-on-a-Chip: In Vitro Systems Mimicking In Vivo FunctionsSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
Add to Calendar ▼2017-07-11 14:30:002017-07-11 15:30:00Europe/LondonMicroengineered Systems to Recreate Human Lung PathophysiologySELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
