Dean’s Seminar Series featuring Stella Alimperti, PhD – “Organ-on-a-chip and 3D printing: Emerging paradigms in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine”
Dean’s Seminar Series
Stella Alimperti, PhD
Principal Investigator
Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory
American Dental Association Science and Research Institute
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Title & Abstract:
“Organ-on-a-chip and 3D printing: Emerging paradigms in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine”
Research in Alimperti’s laboratory at ADA/NIST aims to integrate medicine and technology within a single framework for potential therapeutic purposes of maxillofacial and musculoskeletal diseases. Approximately half of the American adults are affected by them, with an estimated collective cost to the healthcare system of over $442 billion. However, significant challenges remain in developing novel treatments to alleviate or prevent those diseases. Specifically, the development of new therapeutics is based on conventional two-dimensional (2D) in vitro models, which lack the three-dimensional (3D) spatiotemporal and multicellular structure and functionality of a tissue. In addition, in vivo animal models are cost-demanding, laborious, and highly risky owing to the inherent deficiency in cross-species extrapolation. To overcome these limitations, in Alimperti’s lab, we employ a multidisciplinary research program that encompasses 3D printing, organ-on-a-chip technologies, and molecular biology to build preclinical disease models, which recapitulate the maxillofacial and musculoskeletal pathology and work as a diagnostic platform for therapeutic purposes. In the current presentation, we will demonstrate a novel 3D printed in vitro model named bone-on-a-chip as a proof of concept. In this model, the blood vessel, comprised of a single endothelial layer embedded in a collagen I matrix, was connected to a pneumatic pressure controller to track the mean vessel diameter under varying pressures up to 300 Pa. Next, based on this platform, we identified that the presence of glucocorticoids inhibited the microvascular barrier integrity, osteogenesis, and connexin-43/MAPK mediated endothelial-osteoblast cell interactions. The gained insights provided an understanding of the underlying physiological mechanisms linking vascularization to bone function. Furthermore, they laid the foundations to develop future targets for maxillofacial and musculoskeletal diseases and to engineer new 3D printed vascularized grafts, which may enhance tissue regeneration and host-graft integration. Finally, we anticipate that our knowledge gained from bone microvasculature may be widely adopted to promote the microvascular regeneration capacity of other organs, such as the kidney or lung.