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SUMMARY:Title to be confirmed - Dr Matthew Lim\, Dept of Surgery
DTSTART:20081013T083000Z
DTEND:20081013T090000Z
UID:TALK14546@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Meera Arumugam
DESCRIPTION:We present a three-dimensional perfused flow bioreactor which 
 was designed to recapitulate the in-vivo biomechanical microenvironment of
  the liver parenchyma with the aim of enhancing the viability of co-cultur
 es of primary rat liver cells in-vitro for use as a toxicology assays in t
 he context of drug screening.\nUsing this same bioreactor\, we show that w
 e are able to culture embryonic stem cells on a three-dimensional scaffold
  while subjecting them to a constant shear stress and inducing cardiomyocy
 te differentiation through biochemical means. Our preliminary experiments 
 lead us to believe that we are producing vascularised cardiac tissue evide
 nced by the upregulation of cardiac and endothelial specific genes.\nCultu
 ring vascularised tissue will enhance the transport of factors and oxygen 
 to all the cultured tissue mass giving us the ability to culture larger vo
 lumes of tissue whilst avoiding hypoxia. We are constantly improving the b
 iochemical induction to the cardiac fate while optimising biomechanical fo
 rces for optimal de-novo angiogenensis with the aim of producing functiona
 l tissue grafts.\nThis tissue provides a more physiologically relevant mod
 el for the transplantation immunology studies that are currently ongoing. 
 The natural extension of this work includes generating tissue of other vas
 cularised organs such as the liver and kidney.
LOCATION:Cripps Court\, Magdalene College
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