Enhancing cell therapies using microfluidic encapsulation strategies

使用微流体封装策略增强细胞治疗

• 批准号: 549626-2020
• 负责人: Godin, MichelM
• 金额: $ 11.9万
• 依托单位: University of Ottawa
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Collaborative Health Research Projects
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=762255
• 关键词: Enhancing; cell; therapies; using; microfluidic

Cell-based therapies hold tremendous potential to repair damaged tissue but the centralproblem confronting ALL cell-based therapeutics lies in promoting meaningful long-termengraftment of transplanted cells. Recently, we developed a novel microfluidic platform toencapsulate cardiovascular progenitor cells in protective hydrogel cocoons, promoting cellviability while improving engraftment within injured tissue and providing markedly improvedtherapeutic benefits. However, this therapeutic effect is ultimately ephemeral as transplantedegress their protective hydrogel microcapsules rapidly and typically fail to be retained formore than a few additional days in the targeted tissue, thus limiting their full therapeuticimpact. Our vision is to overcome these limitations by exploiting the ability of cell-type specificbiomaterials and by using novel microencapsulation strategies to extend cell viability, whileensuring tissue persistence upon engraftment, ultimately promoting therapeutic repair ofinjured tissue. With broad implications in cellular therapeutics, we have found that this isparticularly relevant to chronic lung disease of prematurity, the main complication of pretermbirth, to the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), and to cardiac injury repair,in which we have shown the protective effects of MSCs, EPCs and EDCs in vivo. We areworking with Northern Therapeutics, a Canadian biotechnology company, to ensure thisresearch will be widely applicable to the field of regenerative medicine, be of marked benefitto chronically ill patients, aide in the global competitiveness of a Canadian company, andstimulate economic development in Canada in an emerging new market.

基于细胞的疗法在修复受损组织方面具有巨大的潜力，但所有基于细胞的疗法面临的中心问题在于促进有意义的移植细胞的长期移植。最近，我们开发了一种新型的微流控平台，将心血管前体细胞包裹在保护性水凝胶茧中，提高细胞活力，同时改善损伤组织内的植入，并提供显著改善的治疗效果。然而，这种治疗效果最终是短暂的，因为移植后它们的保护性水凝胶微囊迅速退化，并且通常无法在目标组织中保留超过几天，从而限制了它们的全部治疗效果。我们的愿景是通过利用细胞类型特定的生物材料的能力和使用新的微胶囊策略来延长细胞活力，同时确保组织在植入后的持久性，最终促进损伤组织的治疗性修复，从而克服这些限制。随着细胞治疗的广泛应用，我们发现它与早产的主要并发症--早产儿慢性肺部疾病、肺动脉高压(PAH)的治疗以及心脏损伤的修复特别相关，其中我们已经在体内展示了MSCs、EPC和EDCs的保护作用。我们正在与加拿大生物技术公司Northern Treeutics合作，以确保这项研究将广泛应用于再生医学领域，对慢性病患者具有明显的好处，有助于加拿大公司的全球竞争力，并在新兴的新市场刺激加拿大的经济发展。