NC State Professors Stefano Menegatti (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering) and Michael Daniele (Biomedical and Electrical Engineering) are developing an engineered tissue scaffold to optimize the growth of continuous blood vessel networks, and thus large tissue grafts which will provide a route to engineer “human-sized” tissues and organs. The results of their research will impact the fundamental understanding of how growth factors affect blood vessel formation and provide insight into how to control these mechanisms.
This will lead to potential impacts in the areas of treating cardiovascular and hematological diseases via both traditional therapeutics and next-generation regenerative medicine. In FY 18-19, they reported the following:
- 3 faculty members,
- 2 undergraduate students,
- 2 graduate students,
- 2 post-docs, and 3 seminar presentations.
KIETS support was leveraged with 2 Comparative Medicine Institute trainee grants which include support and supply money for 3 undergraduate trainees totaling $10,500. In FY 19-20, the PIs are working to submit 2 NSF research proposals. The proposals under preparation are A “Cookbook” of Cell Culture Substrates for Transforming Stem and Progenitor Cells into the Building Blocks for Tissue Engineering” and Reconfigurable Sensing and Analysis of Stem Cell Differentiation for Understanding and Optimization of Cardiovascular Tissue Performance.