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)

9:00 – 9:45

Keynote

Mark Skyler-Scott

Scaling Up 3D Bioprinting Toward Whole Organ Engineering (ABSTRACT)

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
Roger Kamm (Session chair)

11:00 – 11:30

Speaker 1

Takanori Takebe

Organoid-guided Precision Hepatology (ABSTRACT)

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

Melissa Lambeth Kemp

Quantifying and simulating spatial organization in iPSC-derived tissues (ABSTRACT)

2:15 – 2:45

Speaker 2

Shuichi Takayama

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

Jennifer Lewis

Biomanufacturing Vascularized Human Tissues via Organoid Building Blocks (ABSTRACT)

4:15 – 4:45

Speaker 2

Christopher Hughes

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)

Kimberly Homan

The Route from Development to Deployment of M-CELS inside Pharma (ABSTRACT)

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

Session 6

Synthetic biology approaches to Organoid generation
Rashmi Mohanty (Session chair)

11:00 – 11:30

Speaker 1

Leonardo Morsut

Learning to design and implement synthetic developmental trajectories (ABSTRACT)

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 (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)

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic

Patient-specific Organs-on-Chip models of human pathophysiology (ABSTRACT)

2:45 – 3:15

Ethics, Societal Considerations, & Policies

Insoo Hyun

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

Joseph Wu

Stem Cells & Genomics: From Precision Medicine to Clinical Trials in Dish (ABSTRACT)

4:15 – 4:45

Speaker 2

Milica Radisic

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)

9:00 – 9:45

Keynote

Alysson Muotri

Modeling human neurodevelopment using brain organoids (ABSTRACT)

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

Session 10

Organ on chip
Shuichi Takayama (Session chair)

11:15 – 11:45

Speaker 1

Ankur Singh

Human Immune Organoids and Complex Organ-on-Chip Technologies (ABSTRACT)

11:45 – 12:15

Speaker 2

Linda Griffith

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

Omni Hilton Head Resort
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