Events

Date: 10 December 2024   Time: 12:15 - 12:45

Location: SEMS Seminar Room, 3rd floor, Engineering Building

Title:

Engineering Spatiotemporal Cues for Directed Formation of Musculoskeletal Tissues

Abstract:

Joint disease is detrimental to basic quality of life and effective treatments are lacking. Tissue engineering has the potential to offer more biologically faithful tissues derived with minimal invasiveness, but the resulting tissues currently lack the full composition, organization, and function of native tissue. In normal joint development, finely coordinated spatiotemporal gradients of morphogens dictate cell fate. Next-generation tissue engineering should leverage emerging technologies to provide permissive environmental cues harnessing the innate regenerative potential of stem/progenitor cells to organize into structurally complex and functional tissues. Thus, the central concept of my work has been to guide engineered musculoskeletal tissue formation using technologies which can introduce biologically inspired spatiotemporal cues. Such approaches have included the use of perfusion bioreactors, optogenetics, and 3D bioprinting. These advanced tissue engineering strategies can support early-stage therapeutic intervention by creating advanced in vitro models for studying disease, as well as late-stage repair by providing grafts for regenerative implantation. Collectively, these studies establish novel musculoskeletal tissue engineering approaches which can be leveraged to alleviate the burden of joint disease.

About the speaker:

Dr. Josephine Wu is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Daniel Kelly Lab at Trinity College Dublin. She completed her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, focusing on engineering spatiotemporal cues for cartilage formation. Her research specialises in 3D bioprinting, optogenetics, and tissue regeneration, and has been recognised with numerous awards, including the Wellcome Trust Early Career Award and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship.