Prabhas Moghe, PhD - Rutgers University

Forecasting and steering stem cell fates in engineered microenvironments

Abstract:
How stem cells parse microenvironmental cues and make functional decisions is one of the major research endeavors in the Moghe laboratory at Rutgers.  This talk will be divided into two parts.  The first part, focused on profiling of stem cells, will review a high content imaging approach to obtain multidimensional descriptors of stem cell organization.  These descriptors of the stem cell phenotypes and mechanobiology can be used to parse stem cell subpopulations and gene expression much earlier than readouts enabled by traditional biochemical assays.  An example of how this strategy can be used to rank-order differentially osteogenic polymeric biomaterials will be highlighted.  The toolbox can also be applied to track the evolution of lineage restriction, cancerous transformation of adult stem cells, or follow minute organizational changes in nuclear proteins regulating cell cycle and epigenetic modifications.  The second part of the talk will focus on understanding how three-dimensional substrates regulate stem cell phenomena, including self-renewal and directed differentiation, with an emerging focus on neural reprogramming of human pluripotent stem cells.

Biography:

Prabhas Moghe is a Professor and Vice Chair of Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He obtained his PhD in Chemical Engineering (Bioengineering) at the University of Minnesota and completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital prior to joining the Rutgers faculty in 1995.

Professor Moghe’s recent research efforts have been focused on the elucidation of stem cell-biomaterial interactions and nanomedicine. He and his colleagues have pioneered the design of polymer therapeutics called nanolipoblockers; advanced a new formalism for high content imaging for profiling of the stem cell phenotype in the emerging field of bio-materiomics; and developed a new generation of rare earth nanoprobes for optical disease tracking. An elected International Fellow of Biomaterials Science and Engineering and of the AIMBE, Professor Moghe has directed two NSF IGERT programs at Rutgers, on Biointerfaces and Integrative Science and Engineering of Stem Cells (www.igert.rutgers.edu), currently co-directs a NIH T32 Postdoctoral Training Program on Translational Regenerative Medicine (www.njbiomaterials.org), and leads a major core, within RESBIO: a National Biomedical Technology Resource Center, funded by the NIH/NIBIB, on Cell Profiling of Polymeric Biomaterials.

The Stem Cell Engineering seminar series brings leaders in the field to Georgia Tech to share their most recent work and advances.  The seminars are open to all faculty, trainees and staff interested in stem cell engineering research.  Please visit the Stem Cell Engineering Center website or the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience website for a list of upcoming and previous speakers. Suggestions for potential speakers are always welcome - email Megan Richards.