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 |
|
| 8:45 – 9:00 |
Opening Remarks |
Ron Weiss and Roger Kamm |
|
| 9:00 – 9:45 |
Keynote |
Mark Skyler-Scott |
Scaling Up 3D Bioprinting Toward Whole Organ Engineering (ABSTRACT) |
| Session 1 |
Advanced technologies for engineering multicellular living systems |
||
| 9:45 – 10:15 |
Speaker 1 |
Thomas Hartung |
AI + brain organoids = Organoid Intelligence (OI) (ABSTRACT) |
| 10:15 – 10:45 |
Speaker 2 |
Zev Gartner |
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 |
||
| 11:00 – 11:30 |
Speaker 1 |
Takanori Takebe |
Organoid-guided Precision Hepatology (ABSTRACT) |
| 11:30 – 12:00 |
Speaker 2 |
Jennifer Lewis |
Biomanufacturing Vascularized Human Tissues via Organoid Building Blocks (ABSTRACT) |
| 12:00 – 12:15 |
Short Talk 1 |
Ian Kinstlinger |
Synthetic recombinant cultures to investigate and control lung morphogenesis |
| 12:15 – 12:30 |
Short Talk 2 |
Rashmi P. Mohanty |
Microrobotics for Spatiotemporally Controlled Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (hiPSC) Differentiation |
| 12:30 – 1:45 |
Lunch and poster session |
||
| Session 3 |
Advanced Tissue Models |
||
| 1:45 – 2:15 |
Speaker 1 |
Melissa Lambeth Kemp |
Quantifying and simulating spatial organization in iPSC-derived tissues |
| 2:15 – 2:45 |
Speaker 2 |
Shuichi Takayama |
|
| 2:45 – 3:00 |
Short Talk 1 |
William Drennan |
Force-induced cross-talk between muscle and neurons in developing motor units |
| 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 |
| 3:15 – 3:45 |
Coffee break |
||
| Session 4 |
In vitro vascular systems |
||
| 3:45 – 4:15 |
Speaker 1 |
Manu Platt |
|
| 4:15 – 4:45 |
Speaker 2 |
Christopher Hughes |
|
| 4:15 – 5:00 |
Short Talk 1 |
Sarah Shelton |
Identifying Differential Roles of Fibroblast Subtypes in Pancreatic Cancer |
| 4:45 – 5:15 |
Short Talk 2 |
Parker Esswein |
Engineering the Inner Blood-Retina Barrier for Disease Modeling and Therapeutic Discovery |
| 5:15 – 6:00 |
Career Panel |
Mareshia Donald, Manu Platt, and Insoo Hyun |
|
| 6:00 – |
Dinner |
||
Thursday, March 27th
Room Palmetto Ballroom
Session |
Speaker |
Talk Title |
|
| 9:00 – 9:45 |
Keynote (morning) |
Kimberly Homan |
The Route from Development to Deployment of M-CELS for Drug Development (ABSTRACT) |
| Session 5 |
Cell and tissue mechanics |
||
| 9:45 – 10:15 |
Speaker 1 |
Valerie Horsley |
Mechanical regulation of tissue fibrosis |
| 10:15 – 10:45 |
Speaker 2 |
Tracy Hookway |
Engineering Innervated Multicellular Cardiovascular Models (ABSTRACT) |
| 10:45 – 11:00 |
Coffee break (Room May 1 & 2) |
||
| Session 6 |
Synthetic biology approaches to Organoid generation |
||
| 11:00 – 11:30 |
Speaker 1 |
Leonardo Morsut |
|
| 11:30 – 12:00 |
Speaker 2 |
Mo Ebrahimkhani |
Modeling the Black Box of Human Development to Advance Regenerative Medicine (ABSTRACT) |
| 12:00 – 12:15 |
Short Talk 1 |
Katherine Kiwimagi |
pyTASBE – A Python Toolbox to Revolutionize 2D Cell-Cell Communication Analysis through FACs and Microscopy Data Integration |
| 12:15 – 12:30 |
Short Talk 2 |
Ziyu Yu |
Decoding Extra-embryonic Human Hematopoiesis Using heX-embryoids |
| 12:30 – 2:00 |
Lunch (May 1 & 2) and poster session (Sabal 1 & 2) |
||
| 2:00 – 2:45 |
Keynote (afternoon) |
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic |
Patient-specific Organs-on-Chip models of human pathophysiology (ABSTRACT) |
| 2:45 – 3:15 |
Ethics, Societal Considerations, & Policies |
Insoo Hyun |
|
| 3:15 – 3:45 |
Coffee break (Room May 1 & 2) |
||
| Session 8 |
Disease modeling |
||
| 3:45 – 4:15 |
Speaker 1 |
Joseph Wu |
Stem Cells & Genomics: From Precision Medicine to Clinical Trials in Dish |
| 4:15 – 4:45 |
Speaker 2 |
Milica Radisic |
|
| 4:45 – 5:00 |
Short Talk 1 |
Xun Wang |
Multi-physics physiological human brain models for elucidating mechanisms in Alzheimer’s disease |
| 5:00 – 5:15 |
Short Talk 2 |
Holly Poling |
Mesenchyme augments the therapeutic capacity of human intestinal organoids in vivo |
| 5:15 – 5:30 |
Short Talk 3 |
Waleed Ahmad Mirza |
Active self-organization of focal adhesions driving cell shape changes |
| 5:30 – 5:45 |
Short Talk 4 |
||
Friday March 28th
Room Palmetto Ballroom
Session |
Speaker |
Talk Title |
|
| 9:00 – 9:45 |
Keynote |
Alysson Muotri |
Modeling human neurodevelopment using brain organoids (ABSTRACT) |
| Session 9 |
In vitro cardiac and skeletal muscle |
||
| 9:45 – 10:15 |
Speaker 1 |
Ritu Raman |
Tissue Engineering Multicellular Models of the Motor Control System for Medicine and Machines (ABSTRACT) |
| 10:15 – 10:45 |
Speaker 2 |
Oscar Abilez |
Gastruloids Enable Modeling of the Earliest Stages of Human Cardiac and Hepatic Vascularization (ABSTRACT) |
| 10:45 – 11:15 |
Coffee break (Room May 1 & 2) |
||
| Session 10 |
Organ on chip |
||
| 11:15 – 11:45 |
Speaker 1 |
Ankur Singh |
Human immune organoids and immune-on-chip to decode immunity in healthy donors and cancer patients (ABSTRACT) |
| 11:45 – 12:15 |
Speaker 2 |
Linda Griffith |
|
| 12:15 – 12:30 |
Short Talk 1 |
David Bodenstein |
Investigating the Mechanisms of Mitochondrial Transplant in Cardiac-on-a-Chip Models |
| 12:15 – 12:45 |
Short Talk 2 |
Adriana Blazeski |
Heart-on-a-chip platform for the study of myocardial-vascular interactions |
| 12:45 – 1:00 |
Closing Remarks |
Ron Weiss and Roger Kamm |
|
IMPORTANT DATES:
Early registration: 02/28/2025
Register
Late registration: Onsite
Conference dates: March 26-28, 2025