Congratulations to Bao for winning the Outstanding Graduate Student Award from the Fischell Department of Bioengineering! This award comes for Bao’s work related to growing larger bone constructs and vascularization of tissue engineered bone. Congratulations Bao!
TEBL awarded MSCRF grant
The Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission has funded 29 new proposals for the 2015 fiscal year. Among those, our lab was awarded a grant for the proposal titled “Expansion of HSCs In a 3D Printed Bioreactor Containing MSCs as a Hematopoietic Microenvironment”. This project seeks to use bioreactor technology to enhance the expansion and growth of both mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs, which form bone, cartilage, muscle, and other cell types that nurture HSCs in bone marrow) and hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs, which form blood cells) while maintaining their ability to self-renew. The underlying idea is that we can recapitulate some of the key physical cues of the native stem cell niche, and that recapitulating this microenvironment will enhance the expansion of MSCs and HSCs with self-renewal capacity. Ultimately, this could enable researchers to grow larger number of cells than they would via traditional methods, allowing more investigative work into understanding these stem cells and their utilization for regenerative medicine applications.
For more information, visit the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund’s website.
Bracaglia Wins Outstanding Student Award from TERMIS-AM Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 2014
Laurie Bracaglia has been awarded the 2014 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Outstanding Student Award by the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society – Americas Chapter (TERMIS-AM)., the leading society in the field of tissue engineering.
Bracaglia will be presented with an honorarium and plaque recognizing her outstanding achievement within the tissue engineering and regenerative medicine field at the TERMIS-AM conference in Washington, DC, to be held in December 2014. In addition, her award-winning manuscript will be published in the journal, Tissue Engineering Part A.
Bracaglia and Melchiorri Awarded AHA Predoctoral Fellowships
Awarded by the American Heart Association, the fellowships consists of a $24,000/year award and $1,000/year discretionary funds. 17.5% of predoctoral applicants are awarded the fellowship from a pool of 700 qualified national applications. The AHA’s mission is: “Building healthier lives, free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke. Our mission drives everything we do.” Applicants are judged based on how well their research might achieve that goal.
Wang Graduates with PhD
PhD student Martha Wang successfully defended her thesis, “3D Printed Poly(Propylene Fumarate) Scaffolds for the Delivery of Dynamically Cultured Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells,” and graduated with her PhD.