Symposium on Biofabrication for Emulating Biological Tissues, Fall Materials Research Society National Meeting; Boston, Massachusetts; November 29 to December 4, 2020

该资助提供资金，部分支持约10名本科生，研究生，博士后，或代表性不足，女性和初级教师参加并出席在马萨诸塞州波士顿举行的秋季材料研究学会全国会议上的“模拟生物组织的生物制造”研讨会，2020年11月29日至12月4日。2020年计划将扩大为为期4天的研讨会，由17-20场邀请演讲和约60场贡献演讲组成。周二晚上（2020年12月2日）将举行一次额外的海报会议，这将为研究人员提供机会，展示他们的研究，并在个人和非正式的基础上与他人交流。本次研讨会旨在汇集跨学科的专业知识，包括材料科学、物理、化学、工程、生物科学和医学，来自学术、工业和政府机构社区，他们专注于先进制造技术的发展，以产生基于人体的组织模型，以模仿其本土同行。此外，本次研讨会将为在该领域工作的科学家和工程师提供一个交流的平台，促进这些不同学科的思想和技术的交流。最重要的是，研讨会将为来自弱势群体的初级教师、博士后、研究生和研究人员提供机会，在一个跨学科和充满活力的国际研讨会上展示研究成果。组委会强烈承诺招募和促进女性和少数民族学生、博士后和教职员工参加会议。人们越来越认识到，基于平面、静态格式的传统和过于简化的细胞培养策略不能再现生物组织的功能和复杂性。使用先进材料和生物材料制作的微型仿生3D组织模型，当在微流控电路中相互连接在一起时，可以真实地再现人体组织和器官系统的结构、生物学、生理学、分区和互联性。这些系统有可能准确预测人类对药物化合物的反应，并促进纳米药物、化学品和生物物种的高含量测试。在过去的十年中，材料科学和微流体技术的进步提高了组织模型的开发能力，这些模型是通过结合生物材料（如细胞、相关基质和微环境线索）来概括组织水平功能的简单且可复制的平台。由于所需的细胞、动物和试剂数量减少，因此在微尺寸通道中利用流体具有成本效益，使其进一步可扩展。与此相关的是，生物制造技术的快速发展使得仿生微环境的创建能够模拟建筑保真度，在不同的生物材料上施加剪切应力、应变和/或界面。材料的进步将继续推动体外组织建模领域的发展，有助于改善细胞指导性细胞外基质线索，而生物制造将使成功创建复杂的人体组织微环境所需的3D空间控制和动力学得到改善。本次研讨会将涵盖材料科学、物理、化学、工程、生物科学和医学等跨学科主题，重点是用于生成微生理系统或器官芯片平台的先进制造技术，以及在基础研究和转化研究中的应用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This grant provides funding to partially support about 10 undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, or under-represented, female, and junior faculty to attend and present at the symposium on “Biofabrication for Emulating Biological Tissues” at the Fall Materials Research Society National Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, November 29 to December 4, 2020. The 2020 program is being expanded into a 4-day symposium that will be composed of 17-20 invited talks and approximately 60 contributed talks. One additional poster session will be held on Tuesday evening (December 2, 2020) and this will offer opportunities for investigators to present their research and engage with others on an individual and informal basis. This symposium aims to bring together interdisciplinary expertise spanning from materials science, physics, chemistry, engineering, biological sciences, and medicine from the academic, industrial, and government agency communities, who focus on the developments of advanced manufacturing technologies for the generation of human based tissue models for emulating their native counterparts. In addition, this symposium will provide a platform for communications of scientists and engineers working in the area and promote cross-fertilization of ideas and technologies encompassing these different disciplines. Most importantly, the symposium will facilitate opportunities for junior faculties, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and researchers from underrepresented groups to present research results in an interdisciplinary and dynamic international symposium. The organizing committee is strongly committed to recruiting and promoting women and minority students, postdocs, and faculty to attend the meeting.It is increasingly recognized that conventional and oversimplified cell culture strategies based on the planar, static formats cannot reproduce the function and complexity of biological tissues. Miniaturized biomimetic 3D tissue models fabricated using advanced materials and biomaterials, when interconnected together in a microfluidic circuit, can faithfully recapitulate the structure, biology, physiology, compartmentalization, and interconnectivity of human tissue and organ systems. These systems potentially enable accurate prediction of human responses towards pharmaceutical compounds, and facilitate high-content testing of nanomedicines, chemicals, and biological species. In the past decade, advances in materials science and microfluidics technologies have improved the capacity in the development of tissue models as simple and reproducible platforms that recapitulate tissue-level functions through incorporation of biological materials such as cells, their associated matrices, and microenvironmental cues. The utilization of fluids in micro-sized channels is cost-effective due to reductions in the quantity of cells, animals, and reagents required, making it further scalable. In a related way, rapid advancement in biofabrication technologies have enabled the creation of biomimetic microenvironments to emulate architectural fidelity, apply shear stress, strain, and/or interfaces on different biological materials. The advances in materials will continue to drive the field of in vitro tissue modeling by contributing to improved cell-instructive extracellular matrix cues, while biofabrication will enable improved 3D spatial control and dynamics required for the successful creation of the complex human tissue microenvironments. The symposium partially supported by this grant will cover interdisciplinary topics spanning from materials science, physics, chemistry, engineering, biological sciences, and medicine with an emphasis on advanced manufacturing technologies for generating microphysiological systems or organ-on-chip platforms, towards applications in both fundamental studies and translational research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.