I-Corps: Artificial Tissue Scaffolds and Cell Cultures Interlaced with Vasculature-like Micro-Channels

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是一个新型的工程化组织培养平台，将加速再生医学技术向临床市场的转化。根据美国国防部的说法，根据美国卫生与公众服务部的数据，2018年，在美国11.5万人中，只有10%的人需要接受挽救生命的器官移植。生产有活力的人造组织的一个主要障碍是产品的变异性。这项拟议的技术克服了这一限制，因为它能够在人工活组织培养过程中的任何位置对细胞行为进行非破坏性控制。此外，它还允许对细胞行为进行非破坏性分析，通过与传统(通常是牺牲的)分析相比，降低实验成本，从而影响培养物用于生物分子生产、毒性和药物测试等方面的市场。最后，培养平台是自动化的，这一事实解决了采用此类技术的另一个主要后勤障碍，允许公司向医院工作人员提供计算机代码，而不必教他们为每个新产品定制培养方案。这个i-Corps项目将使人们更好地了解拟议的细胞培养技术如何为临床市场提供解决方案；同时也为组织工程行业的成员提供技术洞察力，并为他们现有的培养系统和实践提供重大改进的机会。该技术是一种交织有血管样微通道的组织工程支架，有助于克服限制传统生物制造方法的主要瓶颈。此外，它还为涉及细胞培养的其他细分市场提供了多种好处。例如，这项技术已被证明能够通过以下方式实现新的发现：允许研究人员对微型细胞活检和流出物进行本地化收集以进行非原位分析；在活细胞培养中进行加法和减法细胞操作、组织构型和多余生长的去除；建立动态药物梯度和定制给药方案；通过在大型培养物中深层滋养细胞和从这些地区去除新陈代谢废物来克服大小限制。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is a novel engineered tissue culturing platform that will accelerate the translation of regenerative medicine technologies to the clinical market. According to the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, only 10% of the 115k people in the U.S needed a lifesaving organ transplant in 2018 received it. A major obstacle to producing viable artificial tissues is product variability. The proposed technology overcomes that limitation by enabling non-disruptive control over the cell behavior at any location within the living artificial tissues as they are being cultured. Additionally, it allows for nondestructive analysis of the cell behavior, which will impact the markets where the cultures are used for things like production of biological molecules, toxicity and pharmaceutical testing, etc., by lowering experiment costs relative to the conventional (typically sacrificial) analysis. Lastly, the fact that the culturing platform is automated solves another major logistical hurdle to the adoption of such technologies, by allowing companies to provide computer codes to hospital staff instead of having to teach them custom culturing protocols for each new product. This I-Corps project will allow for better understanding of how the proposed cell culturing technology can offer solutions to the clinical market; while also providing technological insight to members of the tissue engineering industry, and opportunities for significant improvements to their existing culturing systems and practices. The proposed technology is a tissue engineering scaffold interlaced with vascular-like microchannels, which help to overcome major bottlenecks limiting the conventional biomanufacturing approaches. Additionally, it offers multiple benefits to other market segments that involve cell culturing. For example, the technology has been demonstrated to enable new discoveries by allowing researchers to perform localized collections of mini cell biopsies and effluent for ex-situ analysis; additive and subtractive cell operations in living cell cultures, tissue patterning and overgrowth removal; establishing dynamic drug gradients and custom delivery protocols; overcoming size-limitations by nourishing cells deep within large cultures and removing metabolic waste from those regions.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.