October 2018: Annual BMES meeting in Atlanta: Presented our work on the development of a bioartificial pancreas device utilizing optogenetic technology.
September 2018: Elena presented research on the scalable differentiation of pluripotent stem cells to pancreatic cell progeny at the 3rd Bioengineering and Translational Medicine Conference in Boston.
September 2018: Presented our work on stem cell bioprocessing for cell therapies at the 2018 Biomanufacturing Summit.
July 2018: Congratulations to Shawna for successfully defending her thesis describing her work on Reg protein expression and function.
November 2017: Shawna presented recent findings on the expression and signaling of Reg proteins in pancreatic cells at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in Minneapolis. We also presented our work on (i) the optogenetic regulation of insulin secretion in pancreatic beta-cells, and (ii) the release of exosomes by human pluripotent stem cells.
September 2017: The laboratory receives funding from NSF to develop bioprocesses for the generation of insulin-producing cells from stem cells. The work is a collaboration with researchers from the Diabetes Center at UCSF.
July 2017: Congratulations to Fan for publication of the manuscript describing his work on the optogenetic regulation of insulin secretion in pancreatic beta-cells.
January 2017: Zijing (Sylvia) Chen (ChBE Ph.D. track) joins our group. Welcome Sylvia!
November 2016: Our group welcomes Shawna Downing (BioE MS program) to the lab. Welcome Shawna!
November 2016: Fan Zhang presented our work on the development of xeno-free microcarriers at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in San Francisco. The title of his talk was ‘Engineering xeno-free microcarriers with recombinant vitronectin, albumin and UV irradiation for human pluripotent stem cell bioprocessing’ (the published work can be found here).
November 2016: Prof. Tzanakakis presented work from our group on stem cell bioprocessing at the first Translational Medicine and Bioengineering Conference in San Francisco, organized by the Society for Biological Engineering. The title of the presentation was ‘Stem cell-based product biomanufacturing: From cultivation modalities to population based-models’.
October 2016: Presentations were delivered at the 2016 Annual BMES Meeting (Minneapolis, MN). We reported recent results from our work on the optogenic control of insulin secretion in pancreatic beta-cells. We also presented on the generation of xeno-free microcarriers for pluripotent stem cell expansion in our lab (published work can be found here).
September 2016: The Cellular Bioprocess Technology short course was held on September 29-30. We would like to thank all those who attended as well as the lecturers contributing to the success of the course.
August 2016: The Cellular Bioprocess Technology short course is offered this fall at Tufts University. The course is a collaborative effort between Tufts University and the University of Minnesota. Click here for more information.
May 2016: Lab receives funding from NSF on a collaborative project with Prof. L. Black (BME) on the role of matrikines on cardiogenic differentiation.
Nov. 2015: Seminar to the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts.
Nov. 2015: Work on the inverse problem of the stem cell aggregation in stirred suspension and on linking the culture density to stem cell cycle dynamics was presented at the 2015 Annual AIChE Meeting.
Oct. 2015: Yongjia successfully defends her thesis. Congratulations Dr. Fan!
Sept. 2015: Lab receives NSF funding for stem cell biomanufacturing research.
May 2015: Laboratory website is live.
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