Todd McDevitt, Carol Ann and David D. Flanagan professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and director of the Stem Cell Engineering Center, is leading the launch of the nation-wide Cell Manufacturing Consortium, an effort that will be funded by a $499,636 planning grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), announced Thursday by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.
The grant is being administered through the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), the lead agency joined by nine founding partners, a collection of research universities and industries from almost every corner of the country.
“A planning grant of this size is significant, and it lays the groundwork for something larger and more compelling,” says McDevitt, also a Petit Faculty Fellow in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.
One potential goal would be winning designation as an Institute for Manufacturing Innovation (IMI), part of President Obama’s proposed National Network of Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI), a $1 billion federal initiative to create system of 45 regional hubs, each focused on the development and application of different cutting-edge manufacturing technologies. So far, the NNMIs that have been named (such as the digital manufacturing institute in Chicago, announced in February) have ensnared federal grants valued at $30 to $70 million.
The GRA leads a consortium funding partnership that includes Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, the University of Wisconsin (Madison), the University of California (Berkeley), North Carolina State University, Aruna Biomedical (Athens, Ga.), Cellgene Cellular Therapeutics (Warren, N.J.), and RoosterBio (Frederick, Md.). These entities will try to work the snowball effect, gathering others to the cause as they move forward. That’s already happening, says McDevitt, who has been fielding a growing tide of interest from academia and industry.
Greg Dane, an industry fellow with GRA, will lead the new consortium’s development efforts along with McDevitt, who is the scientific technical lead.
“The success of our proposal was the result of an unselfish team effort of multiple people,” McDevitt says. “Based on their mission to foster the development of advanced technologies that can have significant and meaningful economic impact, the Georgia Research Alliance was a natural entity to lead this proposal.”
“In addition, we benefitted tremendously from the experience of people like [founding Petit Institute director and professor emeritus] Bob Nerem and Ben Wang from Georgia Tech's Manufacturing Institute, to put together a project of this scope.”
The presence of the Stem Cell Engineering Center as well as the NSF-funded Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program in Stem Cell Biomanufacturing almost certainly played a role in NIST’s decision, and GRA’s trust, as Georgia Tech continues to solidify its standing as a hub of research activities in biomanufacturing.
“Working together, GRA, Georgia Tech, and our other consortium partners can more readily accelerate the growth of the domestic cell manufacturing industry than individuals or small groups working independently,” says C. Michael Cassidy, president and CEO of the Georgia Research Alliance. “Georgia Tech and its faculty have a strong reputation in bioengineering and will show excellent technical leadership for the consortium.”
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“That’s the beauty of this class, not only is the topic of stem cell engineering unique, but thanks to video conferencing technology, Georgia Tech students can now take a class with their peers from across the country,” said McDevitt, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Stem Cell Engineering (BMED 8813) has been offered since the spring of 2011 and was created by McDevitt as a way to educate graduate students about a research area that is becoming increasingly popular.
Including the 10 students at Tech, there are 39 students enrolled in this semester’s course. Aside from Tech, they are located at Washington University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, University of California, Merced, and the University of Wisconsin. And although this is a graduate-level course, undergraduates can take the course with McDevitt’s permission.
So what can students expect during a week of classes? On Tuesdays, students from all of the participating campuses hear a lecture via the video conferencing system on a stem cell engineering topic — think everything from stem cell biology basics to stem cell biomanufacturing.
When the class meets on Thursdays, two students (at each location) typically lead a 50-minute discussion on a recently published journal article related to the lecture topic to their in-person peers.
Then, for the remainder of class, the Tech group video conferences with the students at other locations to discuss the key points brought up by each local group.
“It’s very helpful to have the perspective of students and faculty from other universities,” said Jenna Wilson, a Ph.D. student in the bioengineering program who is a former student of the course turned teaching assistant. “Because people at other universities have different areas of research expertise, they can provide greater insight into aspects of the stem cell engineering field and pose interesting questions for discussion.”
Wilson also appreciated the small class size and discussion format of the course.
“Both aspects allow for great conversations with other students and some of the leading faculty in the stem cell engineering field,” she added. “Even though the class is broadcast across six universities, it's still a small group where you can feel comfortable sharing ideas and opinions.”
The course is typically offered during spring semester. For more information, email McDevitt .
]]>Professor: Todd McDevitt
Class Size: 10 students (39 total at all of the participating campuses)
Extra: There are subject-matter guest lecturers who participate in class from across the country (via video conferencing) throughout the semester.
This story is part of a series about course offerings at Tech. Know of a class that should be featured? Email editor@comm.gatech.edu.
]]>The reprogramming technique allows a small percentage of cells – often taken from the skin or blood – to become human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) capable of producing a wide range of other cell types. Using cells taken from a patient’s own body, the reprogramming technique might one day enable regenerative therapies that could, for example, provide new heart cells for treating cardiovascular disorders or new neurons for treating Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease.
But the cell reprogramming technique is inefficient, generating mixtures in which the cells of interest make up just a small percentage of the total volume. Separating out the pluripotent stem cells is now time-consuming and requires a level of skill that could limit use of the technique – and hold back the potential therapies.
To address the problem, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have demonstrated a tunable process that separates cells according to the degree to which they adhere to a substrate inside a tiny microfluidic device. The adhesion properties of the hiPSCs differ significantly from those of the cells with which they are mixed, allowing the potentially-therapeutic cells to be separated to as much as 99 percent purity.
The high-throughput separation process, which takes less than 10 minutes to perform, does not rely on labeling technologies such as antibodies. Because it allows separation of intact cell colonies, it avoids damaging the cells, allowing a cell survival rate greater than 80 percent. The resulting cells retain normal transcriptional profiles, differentiation potential and karyotype.
“The principle of the separation is based on the physical phenomenon of adhesion strength, which is controlled by the underlying biology,” said Andrés García, the study’s principal investigator and a professor in Georgia Tech’s Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. “This is a very powerful platform technology because it is easy to implement and easy to scale up.”
The separation process was described April 7 in the advance online publication of the journal Nature Methods. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), supplemented by funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
“The scientists applied their new understanding of the adhesive properties of human pluripotent stem cells to develop a quick, efficient method for isolating these medically important cells,” said Paula Flicker, of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which partly funded the research. “Their work represents an innovative conversion of basic biological findings into a strategy with therapeutic potential.”
An improved separation technique is essential for converting the human induced pluripotent stem cells produced by reprogramming into viable therapies, said Todd McDevitt, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, and director of Georgia Tech’s Stem Cell Engineering Center.
“For research purposes, depending on labeling reagents for separation is not a major problem,” said McDevitt, one of the paper’s co-authors. “But when we move into commercialization and manufacturing of cell therapies for humans, we need a technology approach that is unbiased and able to be scaled up.”
The separation technique, called micro stem cell high-efficiency adhesion-based recovery (µSHEAR), will allow standardization across laboratories, providing consistent results that don’t depend on the skill level of the users. “Because of the engineering and technology involved, and the characterization work, we now have a technology that is readily transferrable,” McDevitt said.
The µSHEAR process grew out of an understanding of how cells involved in the reprogramming process change morphologically as the process proceeds. Using a spinning disk device, the researchers tested the adhesive properties of the hiPSCs, the parental somatic cells, partially-reprogrammed cells and reprogrammed cells that had begun differentiating. For each cell type, they measured its “adhesive signature” – the level of force required to detach the cells from a substrate that had been coated with specific proteins.
The research team, which included Georgia Tech postdoctoral fellows Ankur Singh and Shalu Suri, tested their technique in microfluidic devices developed in collaboration with Hang Lu, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
In the testing, cells from the culture were first allowed to attach to the substrate before being subjected to the flow of buffer fluid. Cells with a lower adhesive signature detached from the substrate at lower flow rates. By varying the flow rate, the researchers were able to separate specific types of cells, allowing production of stem cell cultures with purity as high as 99 percent – from mixtures in which those cells accounted for only a few percent of the total.
“At different stages of reprogramming, we see differences in the molecular composition and distribution of the cellular structures that control adhesion force,” García explained. “Once we know the range of adhesive forces for each cell type, we can apply those narrow ranges to select the populations that come off in each range.”
Using inexpensive disposable “cassettes,” the microfluidic system could be scaled up to increase the volume of cells produced and to provide specific separations, García noted.
Unlike existing labeling techniques, the new separation process works on cell colonies, avoiding the need to risk damaging cells by breaking up colonies for separation. The separation process has been tested with both reprogrammed blood and skin cells. Cells were provided for testing by ArunA Biomedical, a company based in Athens, Ga., founded by University of Georgia professor Steven Stice.
Beyond the direct application in producing stem cells, the separation technique could also help scientists with other research in which cells need to be separated – including potential improvements in the reprogramming technique, which won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2012.
“Cell reprogramming has been a black box,” said McDevitt. “You start the reprogramming process, and when the cells are fully reprogrammed, you can pick them out visually. But there are really interesting scientific questions about this process, and by isolating cells undergoing reprogramming, we may be able to make new discoveries about how the process occurs.”
In addition to those already mentioned, the project also included graduate student Ted Lee and research technician Marissa Cooke of Georgia Tech, researcher Jamie Chilton of ArunA, and Weiqiang Chen and Jianping Fu of the University of Michigan.
This work was supported by an ARRA supplement to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards R01 GM065918 and R43 NS080407, the Stem Cell Engineering Center at Georgia Tech, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, by the National Science Foundation under award DBI-0649833 and an ARRA sub-award under grant RC1CA144825, and by NSF award CMMI-1129611, the Georgia Tech-Emory Center for Regenerative Medicine (GTEC) and the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech. Any conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official positions of the NIH or NSF.
CITATION: Singh, Ankur, et al., “Adhesion strength–based, label-free isolation of human pluripotent stem cells,” (Nature Methods, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2437
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]]>The Institute’s College of Engineering is ranked No. 5 and all 11 Engineering programs ranked within the top 10, including industrial engineering (No. 1), biomedical and bioengineering (No. 2), civil (No. 4), aerospace (No. 5), electrical (No. 5), environmental (No. 5) computer (No. 5), mechanical (No. 5), materials (No. 9), chemical (No. 10) and nuclear (No. 10).
“Georgia Tech’s continued recognition within the U.S. News & World Report graduate rankings is a reflection of the consistent quality and ongoing success of our graduate programs,” said Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson.
The Scheller College of Business MBA program ranked No. 27, while the part-time evening MBA program also ranked highly at No. 24.
]]>"I am truly honored by this award and recognition,” said García, who is a Woodruff Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. “The Society for Biomaterials has had a huge impact in my scientific and professional career and I am delighted to join past awardees from our community. I am also proud to represent my great colleagues along with past and present trainees from Georgia Tech who have contributed to this recognition."
The Society for Biomaterials is the oldest scientific organization in the field of biomaterials and has a mission of encouraging, fostering, promoting and advancing education, and research and development, in biomaterials science. The society has grown to more than 2,000 members since its inception in 1974.
"García is an outstanding recipient of this award," said Buddy Ratner, Ph.D., professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering at the University of Washington, who recommended García for the Clemson award. "His strong commitment to polymeric biomaterials and to the modern biology of healing and regeneration, coupled with a fine intelligence, a charismatic personality and super-charged energy, has propelled his career and technical impact to the top of the discipline."
In addition to this award, the society announced that a pioneering publication by García was one of twenty-five articles selected as part of a special virtual edition of the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research celebrating the 100th volume of the journal. The criteria for inclusion of a paper in the special issue was the identification of articles that, in their time, were considered novel, original, state-of-the-art, ground-breaking, and opened new areas of biomaterials research.
García’s work established the paradigm that cell response to material properties could be mediated by protein adsorption. This research established an experimental framework to analyze adhesive mechanisms controlling cell-surface interactions and provided a general strategy for surface-directed control of adsorbed protein activity to manipulate cell function in biomaterial and biotechnology applications. This finding established a new strategy to direct cellular responses to biomaterials and has broad application to the engineering of materials to elicit specific biological responses.
The article, “Surface Chemistry Modulates Fibronectin Conformation and Directs Integrin Binding and Specificity to Control Cell Adhesion,” was co-authored by collaborator David M. Collard, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech, and by Benjamin G. Keselowsky, who was then a graduate student in the García laboratory. Keselowsky is now an associate professor at the University of Florida.
García’s research program focuses on engineering biomaterials that promote tissue repair and healing; quantitative analyses of mechanisms regulating cell adhesive forces; and cell-based therapies for regenerative medicine. These integrated cellular engineering strategies have provided new insights into mechanisms regulating cell-material interactions and established new approaches for the rational design of biomaterials and cell-delivery vehicles for regenerative medicine applications, including bone repair, vascularization and inflammation.
His laboratory’s research has led to advances across many areas of regenerative medicine including applications related to the bone and cartilage, angiogenesis, neurogenesis, inflammation, and implant integration with tissues.
García has co-authored papers in leading biomaterials, tissue engineering, and cell biology journals as well as several patents and invention disclosures. He has received several distinctions throughout his successful career, including the NSF CAREER Award, Arthritis Investigator Award, Georgia Tech’s CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, Young Investigator Award from the Society for Biomaterials, Petit Institute Above and Beyond Award and Georgia Tech’s Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award.
Currently García serves as chair of the Interdisciplinary Bioengineering Graduate Program at Georgia Tech. He is also the director of a NIH/NIGMS biotechnology training grant on cell and tissue engineering. He serves on the editorial boards of leading biomaterial and regenerative medicine journals as well as NIH and NSF review panels. García has been recognized as a top Latino educator by the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and has been elected a Fellow of Biomaterials Science and Engineering by the International Union of Societies of Biomaterials Science and Engineering.
García joined Georgia Tech as assistant professor in 1998. He received a B.S. in mechanical engineering with honors from Cornell University in 1991. He received M.S.E. in 1992 and Ph.D. in 1996 in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
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“This grant provides a unique training opportunity for top engineering graduate students looking to understand how to control stem cells into clinically relevant numbers,” stated Todd McDevitt, PhD.
McDevitt, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering is co-directing the IGERT program with Robert M. Nerem, professor emeritus of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. McDevitt is also director of the Stem Cell Engineering Center which administers this award.
Recently highlighted by Nature magazine as one of the “out of the box” manufacturing educational programs in the country, the $3 million NSF-funded IGERT was awarded to Georgia Tech in 2010 to educate and train the first generation of Ph.D. students in the translation and commercialization of stem cell technologies for diagnostic and therapeutic applications.
The Stem Cell Biomanufacturing IGERT program supports new incoming Georgia Tech Ph.D. students for their first two years of graduate school. The program offers a core curriculum in stem cell engineering and bioprocessing coupled with elective tracks in advanced technologies, public policy, ethics or entrepreneurship.
“The current state of the field of stem cell research offers a unique opportunity for engineers to contribute significantly to the generation of robust, reproducible and scalable methods for phenotypic characterization, propagation, differentiation and bioprocessing of stem cells,” McDevitt added.
Trainees are afforded opportunities to meet with leading experts in the field who visit as part of the Stem Cell Engineering seminar series, attend the annual stem cell engineering workshop, participate in outreach activities and interact with representatives from leading companies during Georgia Tech’s annual Bio Industry Symposium.
Georgia Tech's Stem Cell Biomanufacturing IGERT award will support at least 30 graduate students over the 5 years of the award.
2012 Trainees
Olivia Burnsed - Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Efrain Cermeno - Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Albert Cheng - Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Jose Garcia - George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Emily Jackson - School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
2011 Trainees
Tom Bongiorno – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Rob Dromms – School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Devon Headen – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Greg Holst – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Torri Rinker – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Shalini Saxena – School of Material Science & Engineering
Josh Zimmerman – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
2010 Trainees
Amy Cheng – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Alison Douglas – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Jennifer Lei – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Douglas White – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Jenna Wilson – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
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This conference focused on the advancement of stem cell research and tissue engineering with regards to biology, tissue regeneration and development of cell-based therapies. These approaches are contributing to the development of applied efforts in stem cell biology and engineering that can combine to aid in the development of stem cell therapeutics and bioprocesses.
Jenna presented on the microfluidic single-cell analysis of embryoid body heterogeneity. Her abstract detailed the need for single cell analysis techniques in order to assess heterogeneous cell types, particularly pluripotent stem cells. She has been developing a microfluidic approach to analyze the individual phenotypes of the cells from single EBs. Through her research, she has found that the use of a microfluidic device can provide a better evaluation on the efficacy and efficiency of directed differentiation methods by parsing out single cell dynamics from broad population-based information.
Doug presented on his development of a computational model which can predict phenotypic changes of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in 3-D embryoid bodies. His research objective is to utilize rules based spatial and cellular modeling to provide insight into the underlying mechanisms governing cell fate transitions in 3-dimensional microenvironments experienced by pluripotent stem cells. Through his research, he has found that the state transition between pluripotency is largely modulated by local regulatory networks.
]]>The Institute’s College of Engineering ranked No. 4 for theeighth consecutive year and all eleven of the programs within the college areranked in the top 10 including industrial engineering (No. 1), biomedical and bioengineering (No.2), civil (No. 3), aerospace (No. 4), electrical (No. 5), nuclear (No. 5), environmental(No. 6), computer (No. 6), mechanical (No. 6), materials (No. 7) and chemical(No. 10).
“All of Georgia Tech’s graduateengineering programs are ranked in the top ten in the nation. We’re proud that our College of Engineeringis not only one of the best in the U.S., but also the largest, preparing nearly3,000 graduates each year,” said Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud”Peterson. “We commend our outstandingfaculty, staff and students who helped make this a reality.”
Georgia Tech appears on the top 10 list of engineering specialties more than any other ranked institution.
The Georgia Tech College of Management full-time MBA programranked No. 32, while the Institute’s part-time MBA program ranked No. 28.
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The $3 million NSF-funded IGERT was awarded to Georgia Tech in 2010 to educate and train the first generation of PhD students in the translation and commercialization of stem cell technologies for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. The current state of the field of stem cell research offers a unique opportunity for engineers to contribute significantly to the generation of robust, reproducible and scalable methods for phenotypic characterization, propagation, differentiation and bioprocessing of stem cells.
Directed by Co-Principal investigators, Todd C. McDevitt, PhD, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Robert M. Nerem, PhD, professor emeritus in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, this grant provides a unique training opportunity to top engineering graduate students looking to understand how to scale and control stem cells into clinically relevant numbers. The goal, to train the next generation of experts in this new field of stem cell biomanufacturing for the development of stem cell technologies, diagnostics, and therapies.
Catalyzed by a surge of activity in the late 1990s, advances in stem cell biology over the past decade have continued to accelerate at a rapid pace. The manufacturing industry is expanding with commercial development of stem cell products projected to be $10 billion within the next 6-8 years. Moreover, the transformation from discoveries in stem cell biology to viable cellular technologies has enormous promise to revolutionize a range of applications for many aspects of society. As a result, stem cell biomanufacturing is on the verge of broadly impacting regenerative medicine, drug discovery and development, cell-based diagnostics and cancer.
Earlier this year, United States President Barack Obama asked Georgia Tech’s President G.P. “Bud” Peterson to join the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership steering committee to revolutionize manufacturing in the United States. Along with other industry and university representatives, the purpose of this committee is to identify and invest in the key emerging technologies, such as information technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology to help U.S. manufacturers improve cost, quality and speed of production in order to remain globally competitive. The stem cell biomanufacturing industry need look no further than President Peterson’s backyard for future experts in stem cell biomanufacturing.
“I have received dozens of calls and emails from industry looking for graduates of this program because of the uniqueness of the training and the need for manufacturing expertise,” stated McDevitt. “Georgia Tech has a real opportunity to become a leader in this emerging field and begin to answer questions about down-stream processes so that when the first clinical therapies are discovered, scientists are prepared to be able to respond with cells in the quantity and quality that will be needed for treatment.”
The Stem Cell Biomanufacturing IGERT is further catalyzed by the Stem Cell Engineering Center, which was also established in 2010 and brings together research laboratories from all over the state of Georgia to discuss and develop collaborative opportunities for research labs engineering novel stem cell based technologies, therapies, and diagnostics.
Georgia Tech's Stem Cell Biomanufacturing IGERT award will train over 30 graduate students in the first 5 years of the program. The IGERT offers a core curriculum in stem cell engineering and analytical design processes coupled with elective tracks in advanced technologies, public policy, ethics or entrepreneurship.
2011 Trainees
Tom Bongiorno – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Advisor – Todd Sulchek
Rob Dromms – School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Advisor – Mark Styczynski
Devon Headen – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Advisor – Andres Garcia
Greg Holst – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Advisor – Craig Forest
Torri Rinker – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Advisor – Johnna Temenoff
Shalini Saxena – School of Material Science & Engineering, Advisor – Andrew Lyon
Josh Zimmerman – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Advisor – Todd McDevitt
2010 Trainees
Amy Cheng – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Advisor – Andrés García
Alison Douglas – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Advisor – Thomas Barker
Jennifer Lei – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Advisor – Johnna Temenoff
Douglas White – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Advisors – Melissa Kemp & Todd McDevitt
Jenna Wilson – Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Advisor – Todd McDevitt
“We applaud this initiative, and Georgia Tech is honored to collaborate to identify ways to strengthen the manufacturing sector to help create jobs in Georgia and across the United States,” said Peterson, who also serves as a member of the Secretary of Commerce's National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The steering committee will guide the efforts of industry leaders, federal agency heads and university presidents, and will partner universities with industry and government agencies to develop new research and education agendas related to advanced manufacturing.
The president also announced a new National Robotics Initiative as part of the advanced manufacturing and technology focus. Henrik Christensen, KUKA Chair of Robotics for Georgia Tech, serves as an academic and research leader on the National Robotics Initiative.
According to Christensen, this is a critical time for the U.S. While the last 25 years saw tremendous progress due to the Internet, the next game-changing revolution will be robotics.
“Robotics technology addresses a number of our nation’s most critical needs, including reinvigorating the U.S. manufacturing base, protecting our citizens and soldiers, caring for our aging population, preserving our environment, and reducing our dependence on foreign oil,” Christensen said. “Through the National Robotics Initiative, the United States can regain our leadership position from Europe, Japan and South Korea, both in terms of basic research and in terms of the application of the technology to secure future growth. As home to one of the nation’s top robotics programs, Georgia Tech is an enthusiastic member of this strategic effort.”
The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership will commit to form a multiuniversity, collaborative framework for the sharing of educational materials and best practices relating to advanced manufacturing and its linkage to the innovation.
Susan Hockfield, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Andrew Liveries of Dow Chemical are chairing the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership steering committee. In addition to Peterson, other committee members include University of California at Berkley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, Stanford President John Hennessy and Carnegie Mellon President Jared Cohon.
“Many of our challenges can be solved through innovation and fostering an entrepreneurial environment, as well as collaboration between industry, education and government to create a healthy economic environment and an educated workforce,” Peterson said. “This collaborative effort will facilitate job creation and global competitiveness and is a component of Georgia Tech’s strategic plan.”
]]>Last year, the appeal to repeal the injunction blocking the NIH from funding research using embryonic stem cells was passed. A second victory for scientists recently occurred when courts ruled that “the Department of Health and Human Services would not prevent future presidents or Congresses from acting anew to limit government funding for research.” However, there is still some public opposition to using human embryos for research. The NIH will fund $125 million to stem cell research this year alone, but scientists are wary knowing this funding comes without long-term security.
The article details programs available to young scientist considering careers in stem-cell research in the US and around the world. Ms. Wadman recommended stem cell PhD programs at Stanford, the Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at New York University School of Medicine, the University of Minnesota, and the Hanover Biomedical Research School in Germany.
She also commented on “the emerging need for biomanufacturures with stem-cell experitise, as exemplified by a new PhD prgoramme in stem-cell biomanufacturing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, funded by the US National Science Foundation. The programme opened its doors last year and is admitting six students per year. “If stem cells are going to move out of the lab, there will be lots of need for engineers to produce a large number of identical cells,” says Aaron Levine, assistant professor of public policy at Georgia Tech and researcher involved in the IGERT.
The Stem Cell Biomanufacturing IGERT program is headed by co-directors, Todd McDevitt, PhD and Bob Nerem, PhD, and offers enormous promise for researchers to become experts in stem cell biomanufacturing for the development of cell-based therapies, including regenerative medicine, drug discovery and development, cell-based diagnostics, and cancer. With funding for the next 4 years, this IGERT program is transforming the potential of stem cells for PhD scientists and engineers.
]]>Aligned with the mission of the Stem Cell Engineering Center, the purpose of this workshop is to cultivate teams of researchers from the basic sciences to address key hurdles and technological challenges currently impeding the development of stem cell therapeutics and diagnostics.
Stem cells, or unspecialized cells, hold tremendous promise as a biological resource for regenerative medicine therapies, pharmaceutical discovery and development, and cell-based diagnostic assays. Transforming the potential of stem cells into viable biomedical technologies and commercial applications is dependent on developing efficient, robust, non-destructive and scalable strategies to control, assay and manufacture stem cells and stem cell-derived products.
Many of the unique challenges posed by stem cell research could be addressed by applying innovative technological advances occurring in adjacent disciplines for similar purposes, but different applications. Presentations during the workshop will include talks on differentiation technologies, bioanalytical techniques, multi-scale phenotypic analysis and stem cell biomanufacturing.
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The discussion detailed how stem cell therapies are advancingfrom research labs to clinical applications at a cautious but accelerated pace.The reason: stem cells serve as the body’s most promising treatment option asthey have the potential to develop into many different types of cells including: blood cells, nervecells and muscle cells. However, there are many facets to stem cells therapiesthat are still unclear.
Dr. McDevitt explained the importance of researching allaspects of stem cells to better understand the effects of the stem celltherapies being developed and more importantly which stem cells are best forthe job. Currently, the Department of Defense is using stem cell therapies totreat wounded soldiers and more research isbeing done to repair spinal cords and damage caused by traumatic braininjuries. He stressed that the unknowns of stem cell therapies are still being discoveredand further study is necessary to find the best stem cell treatment for eachspecific problem.
]]>While stem cell research is on the verge of broadly impacting many elements of the medical field -- regenerative medicine, drug discovery and development, cell-based diagnostics and cancer -- the bio-process engineering that will be required to manufacture sufficient quantities of functional stem cells for these diagnostic and therapeutic purposes has not been rigorously explored.
"Successfully integrating knowledge of stem cell biology with bioprocess engineering and process development into single individuals is the challenging goal of this program," said Todd McDevitt, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University and a Petit Faculty Fellow in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences at Georgia Tech.
McDevitt is leading the IGERT with Robert M. Nerem, professor emeritus of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Nerem is also director of the Georgia Tech/Emory Center (GTEC) for Regenerative Medicine, which will administer this award.
Ph.D. students funded by Georgia Tech's stem cell bio-manufacturing IGERT will receive interdisciplinary educational training in the biology, engineering, enabling technologies, commercialization and public policy related to stem cells. Their research efforts will focus on developing innovative engineering approaches to bridge the gap between basic discoveries made in stem cell biology and therapeutic stem cell-based technologies.
"This program provides a unique opportunity for engineers to generate standardized and quantitative methods for stem cell isolation, characterization, propagation and differentiation," said Nerem. "These techniques must be developed in a scalable manner to efficiently produce sufficient numbers of stem cells and derivatives in accessible formats in order to yield a spectrum of novel therapeutic and diagnostic applications of stem cells."
The Georgia Tech program is centered around three main research thrusts, which focus on several critical technologies that must be developed to enable the application and use of stem cell-based products:
• Creating reproducible, controlled and scalable methods to expand and differentiate stem cells with defined phenotypes and epigenetic states.
• Developing reliable, rapid and quantifiable methods to characterize the composition and function of stem cells to be generated.
• Designing low-cost systems capable of producing large populations of defined stem cells and derivatives.
Students in the program will be able to take advantage of the core facilities provided by the new Stem Cell Engineering Center at Georgia Tech, which is directed by McDevitt. Technologies developed by the students supported through this IGERT will be rapidly integrated into academic and industrial stem cell practices and cell-based products.
The award will support 30 new Ph.D. students over the next five years and brings together more than two dozen faculty members from Georgia Tech, Emory University, the University of Georgia and the Morehouse School of Medicine. In addition, plans are being made for students to participate in international research collaborations with the National University of Ireland at Galway, Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge and the University of Toronto.
"We anticipate this program will produce the future leaders and innovators in the field of stem cell bio-manufacturing who will contribute significantly at the interface of stem cell engineering, biology and therapy," added McDevitt.
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA Abby Vogel Robinson (404-385-3364; abby@innovate.gatech.edu) or John Toon (404-894-6986; jtoon@gatech.edu)
Media Relations Contacts:
Writer: Abby Vogel Robinson
]]>Each Major Decision episode covers a typical day in the life of a particular career, in this case, as a Biomedical Engineer. This up-beat hosted educational media piece, targets junior high, high school and college students and the videos are intended to help facilitate informed career and field of study decisions.
Each show covers a different career with supporting hierarchies and rankings and there are 55 careers spanning 12 industries in all. The unique informal in-person interview style, comprehensive career coverage and proprietary career ranking system help to show the breadth of career choices available to students as well as help students decide if a particular career is of interest to them. In order to make the featured careers come to life, "real people" are interviewd in "real jobs" at "real company settings."
This is an ongoing video project that is being conducted by Caerus Point LLC. Caerus Point is an enterprising career guidance company focused on significantly improving the career prospects of school children and college students across the USA.
The overall objective of the videos is to prepare our children for the future by equipping them with knowledge and the necessary tools that will enable them to make informed career decisions that are based on realistic expectations. In addition, the program is designed to help boost post-secondary education and reduce dropout rates by educating America’s youth about the array of careers that are available today.
The show, Major Decision, is hosted by two young professionals to whom their target audience can relate and the videos are edited in such a way that it provides the student with an "as realistic as possible" view of a typical day in the life of that career while keeping their attention via the energetic ensemble.
View Here: McDevitt on Major Decisions
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