funding to study engineered tissues that mimic the liver

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Virginia Tech College of Engineering
researchers will use more than $1
million in grant funding to study engineered
tissues that mimic the liver, one
of the human body’s most complex organs.
Padma Rajagopalan, an assistant professor
in the department of chemical
engineering, is designing liver mimics
that eventually could form the basis for
extracorporeal liver-assist devices. She
is the principal investigator on three recent
federal grants totaling $1,087,091
related to liver tissue engineering.
The liver plays a major role in the
body’s defense mechanisms and performs
a multitude of functions including
metabolism and detoxification. The
deterioration in any one of the liver’s
functions can cause life-threatening
health problems or death. Liver transplants
are extremely expensive, may not
be appropriate for patients at a high risk
for surgery, or may simply not be possible
due to a lack of suitable donors.
The primary research goal of these
projects is to assemble 3D cellular structures
that mimic the liver using the major
cell types found in the liver.
Rajagopalan’s interest in this research
began when she conducted studies on
liver tissue engineering while she was a
research associate at Massachusetts
General Hospital, Harvard Medical
School, from 2002 to 2004.
Engineering Team To Design And Study Liver Mimics
www.medicalnewstoday.com
“Liver cells can regenerate inside the
body, but lose this ability once removed,”
said Rajagopalan. “Therefore,
researchers need to find a way to sustain
cells in vitro. A critical aspect is
capturing the precise spacing between
different cell types in the liver.” At
Harvard Medical School, Rajagopalan
developed a novel method that uses
biocompatible, nanoscale polyelectrolyte
scaffolds to replicate the spatial configuration
within the liver.
A $419,230 grant from the National
Institute of Health is for the project “3-
D In Vitro Liver Sinusoids: Design and
Detoxification Studies.” This project
will focus upon the detoxification pathways
in 3D liver mimics.
A $365,000 grant from the National
Science Foundation (NSF) is for the
project “Self-Assembled Polymer Scaffolds
for Liver Mimics.” Richey Davis,
a professor of chemical engineering, will
collaborate with Rajagopalan on studying
the mechanical properties of these
scaffolds.
A second NSF award, totaling
$302,861, funds “Transcriptional Signatures
in 3D Liver Mimetic Architectures”
research. Through a combination of experimental
and computational approaches,
this project will study cell-cell
communications in the liver mimics. T.
M. Murali, an associate professor in the
department of computer science, will
develop algorithms to unravel gene networks
activated within cells in the liver
mimics. Rajagopalan and Murali collected
the preliminary data for this
project through seed funding obtained
in 2007 from the Institute of Critical
Technology and Applied Sciences
(ICTAS).
Rajagopalan and her collaborators
hope that designing liver mimics and
studying them at the molecular and cellular
levels will bring about a much improved
understanding of the organ’s
structure, and thereafter, to potential
breakthroughs in the design of tissue
engineered livers. “Information gleaned
from this project will provide a sound
theoretical basis for the design of the
next generation of tissue-engineered livers,”
said Rajagopalan.
These projects also include outreach
to middle school students and to ethnically
diverse female high school students.
Through summer camps sponsored
by Virginia Tech’s Center for Enhancement
in Engineering Diversity,
Rajagopalan and her team will introduce
students to the notion of interdisciplinary
research and demonstrate how collaborative
advances in engineering and computer
science can have a direct impact
on human health.
Source: Steven Mackay, Virginia Tech