The Bioengineering Lecture (formerly ‘Bagrit Lecture Series’) is the foremost prestigious annual lecture hosted by the Department of Bioengineering. The first five lectures were named after Sir Leon Bagrit in recognition of the great contribution made in his name to the Department and hence the discipline of Bioengineering through the Sir Leon Bagrit Trust.
Speaker:
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Sciences at Columbia University in the City of New York.
Lecture title:
Engineering human tissues for medical impact
Abstract:
Tissue engineering involves an integrated use of human stem cells, biomaterial scaffolds (providing a structural and logistic template for tissue formation) and bioreactors (providing environmental control, molecular and physical signaling, and insights into tissue structure and function). This biologically inspired approach results in an increasingly successful representation of the environmental milieu of tissue injury, disease and regeneration. It allows the living human tissues to be tailored to the patient and the condition being treated.
A reverse paradigm is also emerging in recent years, with the development of “organs on a chip” for modeling of integrated human physiology. In these models, micro-sized human tissues are matured to adult-like phenotypes and then functionally linked by vascular perfusion containing circulating cells and factors. In all cases, the goal is to recapitulate the native cell niches, using bioengineering tools.
To illustrate the state of the art in the field and reflect on its current challenges and opportunities, this talk will discuss: whole organ engineering for regenerative medicine applications and “organs on chip” for patient-specific studies of tissue injury, disease and regeneration.
Speaker biography:
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic is a bioengineer-appointed University Professor, the highest academic rank at Columbia University reserved for only a few active professors out of 4,000, as the first engineer in the history of Columbia to receive this highest distinction. She is also the Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Sciences and a faculty in the Irving Comprehensive Cancer Centre, College of Dental Medicine, the Centre for Human Development and the Mortimer B Zuckerman Mind Brain Behaviour Institute. She directs the Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering, a home for the NIH-funded Tissue Engineering Resource Centre and Columbia’s Centre for Dental and Craniofacial Research. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Belgrade in Serbia. She was a faculty member until 1993 (as a full professor), holds a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Novi Sad in Serbia, and was a Fulbright Fellow at MIT.
Her lab focuses on engineering functional human tissues for use in regenerative medicine and patient-specific “organs-on-a-chip” for studies of human pathophysiology. She published three books and 415 journal articles in Nature, Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Medicine, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Communications, Nature Protocols, Science Advances, PNAS, Cell Stem Cell, and Science Translational Medicine. With the impact factor h=128, she is among the most highly cited individuals. She gave 460 invited talks and has 75 licensed, issued, published and pending patents. With her students, she founded four biotech companies: epiBone (epibone.com), Tara (tarabiosystems.com), Xylyx (xylyxbio.com), and Immplacate (immplacatehealth.com).
Dr Vunjak-Novakovic serves on the Council of the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), the HHMI Scientific Review Board, and numerous Editorial Boards, Scientific Advisory Boards and Boards of Directors. She was the Chair of the College of Fellows (2016-17) of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame “for developing biological substitutes to restore, maintain or improve tissue function”. She received the Clemson Award of the Biomaterials Society “for significant contributions to the literature on biomaterials” (2009), the Pritzker Award of the Biomedical Engineering Society (2017) and the Shu Chien Achievement Award (2018). As the first woman engineer to receive this distinction, she gave the Director’s lecture at the NIH. Her team received the 2019 TERMIS award for innovation and commercialisation. In 2021, she received the highest recognition of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Galletti Award. She was elected to the New York Academy of Sciences for contributions to biomedical engineering, Academia Europaea for translational research, and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts for contributions to biology and chemistry. She is a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, a Fellow of the AAAS, a Founding Fellow of the International Society for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, and one of the Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers for 2014.
Dr Vunjak-Novakovic is also part of CELL-MET, a multi-institutional National Science Foundation Engineering Research Centre in Cellular Metamaterials (EEC-1647837). CELL-MET aims to grow functional and clinically significant heart tissue while simultaneously developing a talented and diverse workforce to tackle future synthetic tissue engineering challenges.
She was decorated by the Order of Karadjordje Star – Serbia’s highest honour, and elected to the National Academy of Engineering (the first women faculty at Columbia University), the National Academy of Medicine (the first engineer at Columbia University), the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
