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 |
|
| 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 |
| 11:45 – 12:00 |
Short Talk 2 |
Rashmi P. Mohanty |
Microrobotics for Spatiotemporally Controlled Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (hiPSC) Differentiation |
| 12:00 – 12:30 |
Flash Talk (20-25, 1-min talks) |
||
| 12:30 – 1:45 |
Lunch and poster session |
||
| Session 3 |
Advanced Tissue Models Mo Ebrahimkhani (Session chair) |
||
| 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 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 |
|
| 4:45 – 5:00 |
Short Talk 1 |
Sarah Shelton |
Identifying Differential Roles of Fibroblast Subtypes in Pancreatic Cancer |
| 5:00 – 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, Ritu Raman, and Insoo Hyun |
|
| 6:00 – |
Dinner |
||
Thursday, March 27th
Room Palmetto Ballroom
Session |
Speaker |
Talk Title |
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 (Room May 1 & 2) |
||
| 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 |
| 12:15 – 12:30 |
Short Talk 2 |
Ziyu Yu |
Decoding Extra-embryonic Human Hematopoiesis Using heX-embryoids |
| 12:30 – 12:50 |
Flash Talks (10-15, 1-min talks) |
||
| 12:50 – 2:00 |
Lunch (May 1 & 2) 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 |
|
| 3:15 – 3:45 |
Coffee break (Room May 1 & 2) |
||
| 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 |
| 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 |
|
| 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 (Room May 1 & 2) |
||
| 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 |
|
| 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 |
|
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