MCELS: Advances in Basic Research and Translational Opportunities
March 26-28, 2025 | OMNI Hilton Head Resort
One of the grand challenges facing our scientific community is to develop the capability to design, engineer and produce complex, multi-cellular engineered living systems (M-CELS).
These systems might arise from guided differentiation of a cluster of pluripotent stem cells, drawing upon the capabilities to apply chemical, physical, or electrical cues to direct co-differentiation, as well as the intrinsic, natural capabilities of cell populations to produce functional interactions through emergence. Or they can be engineered, by first producing a high-level conceptual design, leading to the specification of components consisting of cell clusters, each comprised of phenotypically distinct cell types. This symposium will bring together experts from a variety of domains, including developmental biology, microphysiological systems, synthetic biology, tissue engineering, biobots, and computational modeling. The MCEL series of meetings has evolved into a hallmark global event that delves into the latest advancements and applications in multi-cellular biological systems and related fields.
CONTACT:
Darlene Ray
MCELS2025@mit.edu
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
Jonathan Babb (MIT)
Mo Ebrahimkhani (University of Pittsburgh)
Roger Kamm (MIT)
Melissa Kemp (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Jennifer Lewis (Harvard University)
Milica Radisic (University of Toronto)
Rashmi Mohanty (MIT)
Nuria Montserrat (IBEC)
Taher Saif (UIUC)
Ron Weiss (MIT)
AGENDA
Wednesday, March 26th
Room Palmetto Ballroom
Session
Speaker
Talk Title
8:00 – 8:45
Breakfast
8:45 – 9:00
Opening Remarks
Ron Weiss and Roger Kamm
Session 1
Advanced technologies for engineering multicellular living systems
Jennifer Lewis (Session chair)
10:15 – 10:45
Speaker 2
Directing the self-organization of more complex and reproducible 3D tissue models (ABSTRACT)
10:45 – 11:00
Coffee break
Session 2
From organoids to organs
Roger Kamm (Session chair)
11:30 – 11:45
Short Talk 1
Ian Kinstlinger
Synthetic recombinant cultures to investigate and control lung morphogenesis (ABSTRACT)
11:45 – 12:00
Short Talk 2
Rashmi P. Mohanty
Microrobotics for Spatiotemporally Controlled Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (hiPSC) Differentiation (ABSTRACT)
12:00 – 12:30
Flash Talk (20-25, 1-min talks)
12:30 – 1:45
Lunch and poster session
Session 3
Advanced Tissue Models
Ankur Singh (Session chair)
1:45 – 2:15
Speaker 1
Quantifying and simulating spatial organization in iPSC-derived tissues (ABSTRACT)
2:15 – 2:45
Speaker 2
Organoids with Reversed Biopolarity (ORBs): SARS-CoV-2 drug testing and breast cancer progression (ABSTRACT)
2:45 – 3:00
Short Talk 1
William Drennan
Force-induced cross-talk between muscle and neurons in developing motor units (ABSTRACT)
3:00 – 3:15
Short Talk 2
Soo Jin Choi
Spatiotemporal activation mapping and detection of conduction blocks in cardiac organoids via 3D shell microelectrode arrays (ABSTRACT)
3:15 – 3:45
Coffee break
Session 4
In vitro vascular systems
Ron Weiss (Session chair)
3:45 – 4:15
Speaker 1
Biomanufacturing Vascularized Human Tissues via Organoid Building Blocks (ABSTRACT)
4:15 – 4:45
Speaker 2
Modeling healthy and diseased vasculature in the Vascularized Micro-Organ platform
4:45 – 5:00
Short Talk 1
Sarah Shelton
Identifying Differential Roles of Fibroblast Subtypes in Pancreatic Cancer (ABSTRACT)
5:00 – 5:15
Short Talk 2
Parker Esswein
Engineering the Inner Blood-Retina Barrier for Disease Modeling and Therapeutic Discovery (ABSTRACT)
5:15 – 6:00
Career Panel
Mareshia Donald, Ritu Raman, and Insoo Hyun
6:00 –
Dinner
Thursday, March 27th
Room Palmetto Ballroom
Session
Speaker
Talk Title
8:00 – 8:45
Breakfast
Session 5
Cell and tissue mechanics
Melissa Kemp (Session chair)
9:00 – 9:45
Keynote (morning)
The Route from Development to Deployment of M-CELS inside Pharma (ABSTRACT)
10:45 – 11:00
Coffee break
Session 6
Synthetic biology approaches to Organoid generation
Rashmi Mohanty (Session chair)
11:00 – 11:30
Speaker 1
Learning to design and implement synthetic developmental trajectories (ABSTRACT)
11:30 – 12:00
Speaker 2
Modeling the Black Box of Human Development to Advance Regenerative Medicine (ABSTRACT)
12:00 – 12:30
Short Talk 1
Katherine Kiwimagi
pyTASBE – A Python Toolbox to Revolutionize 2D Cell-Cell Communication Analysis through FACs and Microscopy Data Integration (ABSTRACT)
12:15 – 12:30
Short Talk 2
Ziyu Yu
Decoding Extra-embryonic Human Hematopoiesis Using heX-embryoids (ABSTRACT)
12:50 – 2:00
Lunch and poster session (Sabal 1 & 2)
Session 7
Milica Radisic (Session chair)
2:00 – 2:45
Keynote (afternoon)
Patient-specific Organs-on-Chip models of human pathophysiology (ABSTRACT)
2:45 – 3:15
Ethics, Societal Considerations, & Policies
The Need to Self-Organize a Code of Ethics for Bioengineering (ABSTRACT)
3:15 – 3:45
Coffee break
Session 8
Disease modeling
Kimberly Homan (Session chair)
3:45 – 4:15
Speaker 1
Stem Cells & Genomics: From Precision Medicine to Clinical Trials in Dish (ABSTRACT)
4:15 – 4:45
Speaker 2
The role of macrophages in immune-induced contractile dysfunction and vascularization of hearts-on-a-chip (ABSTRACT)
4:45 – 5:00
Short Talk 1
Xun Wang
Multi-physics physiological human brain models for elucidating mechanisms in Alzheimer’s disease (ABSTRACT)
5:00 – 5:15
Short Talk 2
Holly Poling
Mesenchyme augments the therapeutic capacity of human intestinal organoids in vivo (ABSTRACT)
5:30 – 5:45
Short Talk 4
Martha Mayo
Friday March 28th
Room Palmetto Ballroom
Session
Speaker
Talk Title
8:00 – 8:45
Breakfast
Session 9
In vitro cardiac and skeletal muscle
Taher Saif (Session chair)
9:45 – 10:15
Speaker 1
Tissue Engineering Multicellular Models of the Motor Control System for Medicine and Machines (ABSTRACT)
10:15 – 10:45
Speaker 2
Gastruloids Enable Modeling of the Earliest Stages of Human Cardiac and Hepatic Vascularization (ABSTRACT)
10:45 – 11:15
Coffee break
Session 10
Organ on chip
Shuichi Takayama (Session chair)
11:45 – 12:15
Speaker 2
How “Menstruation Science” Will Revolutionize Biomedical Research (ABSTRACT)
12:15 – 12:30
Short Talk 1
David Bodenstein
Investigating the Mechanisms of Mitochondrial Transplant in Cardiac-on-a-Chip Models (ABSTRACT)
12:15 – 12:45
Short Talk 2
Adriana Blazeski
Heart-on-a-chip platform for the study of myocardial-vascular interactions (ABSTRACT)
12:45 – 1:00
Closing Remarks
Ron Weiss and Roger Kamm
VENUE:
OMNI Hilton Head Resort
Website | Directions | Transportation
Although the hotel booking link has expired, rooms are still available at the discounted price! Please contact Darlene Ray at dray@mit.edu to reserve your room.
We look forward to seeing you at 2025 MCELS!
IMPORTANT DATES:
Early registration: 02/28/2025
Register
Late registration: Onsite
Conference dates: March 26-28, 2025