Multi-Cellular Engineered Living Systems (M-CELS) is a student-led organization founded by students from Georgia Tech, UIUC, and MIT. We coordinate a joint seminar series focused on advancing research and discussion in multicellular systems.

Please join us for our next Micro-physiological Systems (uPS) seminar in collaboration with the cross-institutional Multi-Cellular Engineered Living Systems (M-CELS) team on the theme of " Microphysiological Systems ". This seminar is in collaboration with MIT and UIUC and will feature one speaker from each of the universities.

The seminar will be held virtually on Apr 13th at 2:30 – 3:30 PM Eastern Time, and the zoom link is https://gatech.zoom.us/j/96832323232

Seminar Speakers:

Joscelyn Mejias, Ph.D. (GaTech)

Title: Microphysiologic Devices for the Study of Fibrotic Diseases in Women’s Health and Aging

Abstract: The fields of biomaterials and organs-on-a-chip have given us an unprecedented ability to recapitulate units of human organs to better understand health and disease. However, applying these tools to female-specific physiology or even recapitulating female-specific organs has lagged far behind, as has adapting these tools to the physiologic changes associated with aging. Our work spans biomaterial systems and organ-on-a-chip platforms to recapitulate the biologic complexities of sex, age, and immune status in driving fibrosis. The discussion will provide an overview of current work on microphysiologic devices related to women’s health, efforts replicate the organ microenvironment, and the vision of future directions for microphysiologic systems to enable discovery in diseases that remain understudied and undertreated.

Qin Maggie Qi, Ph.D. (MIT)

Title: Building Advanced In Vitro Models to Study Neuroinflammation in Retinal Diseases

Abstract: A grand challenge in retinal research is the lack of suitable in vitro tools to understand disease mechanisms, manufacture cells and test therapeutic outcomes. Our group has been developing new in vitro devices mimicking the retina and retinal diseases using microfluidic principles. In this work, I will discuss our ongoing work to study immunopathology regulating glaucoma disease progression in collaboration with Dr. Dong Feng Chen at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. In addition, we have recently made progress on device-specific quantitative modeling that can extract more information about cell-cell interactions from in vitro data, which can further expand the power of ‘retina-on-a-chip’. 

Susan E. Leggett , Ph.D. (UIUC)

Title: Engineering Microphysiological Systems to Study Tumor Heterogeneity and Metastatic Spread in Breast and Ovarian Cancer

Abstract: Tumor heterogeneity and metastatic spread are shaped by dynamic interactions between cancer cells and their microenvironment. My lab develops microphysiological systems to reconstruct key features of breast and ovarian cancer and to study how physical context, multicellular interactions, and tissue architecture drive disease progression. This talk highlights an on-chip breast tumor model that reveals how tumor heterogeneity influences tumor growth and invasion kinetics, alongside a newly engineered peritoneal cavity platform that models the transcoelomic spread of ovarian cancer. Using live-cell imaging across these systems, we investigate how tumor cells move, interact with surrounding tissues, and disseminate during early metastatic colonization. Together, this work shows how engineered microphysiological systems provide new insight into tumor heterogeneity and cancer spread.