Title: Bioengineering neural repair in the CNS

Speaker: Timothy O’Shea, Ph.D.

Date: Friday, October 26

Location / Time: EBB, Room 3029, 2-3pm

Abstract: Following traumatic injury to the adult central nervous system (CNS), neural connectivity is lost and fails to spontaneously regrow. The regeneration failure may be due to the formation of two lesion-related tissue compartments: (i) non-neural lesion core, and (ii) astrocyte scar border. This talk dissects the cell biology of these two tissue compartments and their roles in preserving neural tissue following injury. Stimulating axons to regrow after injury requires the reintroduction of essential factors not present in these CNS lesion compartments. The second part of the talk will outline how various bioengineered tools, including injectable hydrogels, adeno-associated viral vectors and grafted neural progenitor cells, can be used to reintroduce several developmentally essential mechanisms of axon growth back into CNS lesions to stimulate regeneration.

Bio: Timothy O’Shea is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Neurobiology at UCLA. He completed his PhD study in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics within the Health Sciences and Technology (HST) program of Harvard Medical School and MIT. Tim conducted his PhD research with Institute Professor Robert Langer developing biomaterials to improve the delivery of reparative therapies for the treatment of various central nervous system (CNS) diseases. At UCLA he works with Professor Michael Sofroniew (Neurobiology) and Timothy Deming (Bioengineering), developing and testing novel bioengineering tools to study biological mechanisms involved in CNS injury and repair. He has held research fellowships from the Sir John Monash Foundation, the Society of Chemical Industry, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, and American Australian Association. His research has been published in Nature, JCI, Cell Reports, JACS, Advanced Materials, Biomaterials, and other leading journals.