Jonathan Thon,
Assistant Professor,
Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Co-Founder -- Platelet BioGenesis
Dr. Thon is an Assistant Professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and a Co-Founder of Platelet BioGenesis. Jonathan earned his B.Sc. in Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering from McMaster University; and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of British Columbia, Canada, where he worked closely with Canadian Blood Services for the improvement of the processing and storage of blood platelets. Dr. Thon’s research is focused on developing bio-mimetic microfluidic platforms to generate functional platelets and new targeted therapies for thrombocytopenia. This work led to the co-development of Platelet BioGenesis’ human platelet bioreactor that reproduces key features of adult bone marrow to trigger new platelet production at clinical scale.
Bioreactors for Megakaryocyte Studies and Platelet Formation: Where do we Stand?
Thursday, 9 July 2015 at 16:00
Add to Calendar ▼2015-07-09 16:00:002015-07-09 17:00:00Europe/LondonBioreactors for Megakaryocyte Studies and Platelet Formation: Where do we Stand?SELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
The production of lab-generated human platelets is necessary to meet present and future transfusion needs. We have shown that it is feasible to generate functional megakaryocytes from both human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cell cultures. The most significant obstacle to ex vivo platelet production has been triggering megakaryocytes to produce platelets at yields necessary to make production of a platelet transfusion unit both clinically and financially practical. Evidence suggests that key physiological characteristics of the bone marrow environment including extracellular matrix composition, bone marrow stiffness, endothelial cell contacts, and vascular shear stresses trigger platelet release. We recently developed a scalable microfluidic platelet bioreactor that recapitulates these major characteristics of human bone marrow. By exposing megakaryocytes to physiological shear stresses of ~600 mPa we showed an improved rate and extent of platelet production, and reduced the time to initiation of platelet release. Morphology, ultrastructure and function of our lab-generated platelets was consistent with blood platelets. To assess lab-generated platelet quality/safety in vitro and perform function studies in vivo, we will need to achieve a total yield of at least 1x108 PLTs per 300 µL. To achieve 3x1011 platelets per 300 mL (human transfusion unit), bioreactor designs will need to be further adapted to support continuous media perfusion and parallelization, maximize MK/progenitor cell zonal distribution and trapping, and equalize shear stress exposure, while limiting hemodynamic-activation of platelets.
Add to Calendar ▼2015-07-08 00:00:002015-07-09 00:00:00Europe/LondonOrgan-on-a-Chip ConferenceSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
Add to Calendar ▼2015-07-09 16:00:002015-07-09 17:00:00Europe/LondonBioreactors for Megakaryocyte Studies and Platelet Formation: Where do we Stand?SELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
