Abstract

Emergent Engineering of Human Neurological Disease Models

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

Microphysiological models have now been developed for a variety of single organs, as well as multi-organ systems.  These models are also beginning to find useful applications in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry as disease models and for intermediate throughput drug screening.  The current models range from those that are generated by precisely seeding in a device populations of fully differentiated or primary cells that then assemble into functional monolayers or simple 3D structures on one extreme, to ones that are fully emergent, forming by self-assembly often within a single cluster of pluripotent cells on the other.  We refer to these two approaches as ‘top-down engineering’ and ‘emergent engineering’.  In this presentation, the full range of techniques will be discussed, with examples derived from applications in the context of neurological function and disease.