Enhancing cell therapies using microfluidic encapsulation strategies

基于细胞的疗法在修复受损组织方面具有巨大的潜力， 基于ALL细胞的治疗方法面临的问题在于促进有意义的长期 移植细胞的植入。最近，我们开发了一种新型的微流体平台， 将心血管祖细胞包裹在保护性水凝胶茧中， 存活力，同时改善受损组织内的植入，并提供显著改善的 治疗益处。然而，这种治疗效果最终是短暂的， 迅速排出它们的保护性水凝胶微胶囊， 在靶组织中的时间超过几天，从而限制了它们的完全治疗效果。 冲击我们的愿景是通过利用细胞类型特异性的能力来克服这些限制。 生物材料和使用新的微囊化策略来延长细胞活力， 确保植入后的组织持久性，最终促进 受伤的组织在细胞治疗学中具有广泛的意义，我们发现这是 特别是与早产儿的慢性肺部疾病有关，早产儿的主要并发症 出生、肺动脉高压（PAH）的治疗和心脏损伤修复， 其中我们已经显示了MSC、EPCs和EDCs在体内的保护作用。我们 与加拿大生物技术公司北方治疗公司合作， 这项研究将广泛应用于再生医学领域， 为慢性病患者提供服务，帮助加拿大公司提高全球竞争力， 刺激加拿大新兴市场的经济发展。

Cell-based therapies hold tremendous potential to repair damaged tissue but the central problem confronting ALL cell-based therapeutics lies in promoting meaningful long-term engraftment of transplanted cells. Recently, we developed a novel microfluidic platform to encapsulate cardiovascular progenitor cells in protective hydrogel cocoons, promoting cell viability while improving engraftment within injured tissue and providing markedly improved therapeutic benefits. However, this therapeutic effect is ultimately ephemeral as transplanted egress their protective hydrogel microcapsules rapidly and typically fail to be retained for more than a few additional days in the targeted tissue, thus limiting their full therapeutic impact. Our vision is to overcome these limitations by exploiting the ability of cell-type specific biomaterials and by using novel microencapsulation strategies to extend cell viability, while ensuring tissue persistence upon engraftment, ultimately promoting therapeutic repair of injured tissue. With broad implications in cellular therapeutics, we have found that this is particularly relevant to chronic lung disease of prematurity, the main complication of preterm birth, 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 are working with Northern Therapeutics, a Canadian biotechnology company, to ensure this research will be widely applicable to the field of regenerative medicine, be of marked benefit to chronically ill patients, aide in the global competitiveness of a Canadian company, and stimulate economic development in Canada in an emerging new market.