TARA Seminar on Aug. 27

A TARA seminar will be held as follows.

Date: Monday, August 27th, 2018 Time: 16:00-17:00 Venue: Seminar room, 2F, Bldg. A, TARA Center [Map] 

Speaker: Peter Loskill, Ph.D. (Junior Professor, Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB, Germany / Assistant Professor, Research Institute for Women’s Health, Faculty of Medicine, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany)

Subject: “Merging high-content and higher-throughput screening: Microphysiological Organ-on-a-Chip systems integrating human retinal, cardiac and adipose tissue”

Summary: Drug discovery and development to date has relied on animal models, which are useful, but fail to resemble human physiology. The discovery of human iPS cells has led to the emergence of a new paradigm of drug screening using patient- and disease-specific tissue-models. By combining hiPSC technology with microfluidic devices tailored to create microphysiological environments, organ-on-a-chip (OoC) can be generated, which combine human genetic background, in vivo-like structure, physiological functionality, and vasculature-like perfusion. Using microfabrication techniques, we have developed multiple OoCs that incorporate complex human 3D (retinal, cardiac, adipose, pancreatic) tissues, and keep them viable and functional over multiple weeks.