Toronto Biomedical Engineering Conference

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic is University Professor, as the first engineer to ever hold this highest academic rank at Columbia University. She is also the Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Medical Sciences and Dental Medicine. She is also the Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Medical Sciences, and Dental Medicine and a faculty in the Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Center for Human Development. She directs the Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering, the NIH-funded Tissue Engineering Resource Center, and Columbia’s Center for Dental and Craniofacial Research. The focus of her lab is on engineering human tissues for regenerative medicine and “organs-on-chip” models of disease. She is broadly published and highly cited (top 1%), has mentored over 250 trainees, and her lab launched five biotech companies. She was elected to the Academia Europaea, 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, the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada – Academy of Science.

Patient-specific Organs-on-Chip models of human pathophysiology

The field of tissue engineering has been driven by the need to develop biological substitutes of our tissues lost to injury or disease, with the ultimate goal of extending the duration and quality of life. In this context, human cells are regulated using biomaterial scaffolds, which provide structural and logistical frameworks for tissue morphogenesis, and tissue-specific environmental cues bioreactors, which deliver defined molecular and physical cues while enabling mechanistic insights into the biological processes. In recent years, a paradigm shift has emerged with the advent of “organ-on-chip” systems—microengineered human tissues designed to replicate key organ-level functions, including myocardial contractility, hepatic metabolism, and pulmonary and vascular barrier properties. A new generation of organ-on-chip platforms incorporates discrete, physiologically optimized microenvironments for each tissue type, connected to each other by vascular perfusion containing circulating cells, and spatially segregates intratissue from intravascular compartments by endothelial barriers. Engineered tissues derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are increasingly successful in patient-specific modeling of human physiology across contexts of injury, regeneration, and pathology. In line with these advances, the FDA is increasingly recognizing human tissue models as alternatives and complements to the traditional animal testing in drug development. To demonstrate the translational potential of multi-organ tissue platforms, we discuss case studies of modeling organ level and  systemic diseases, such as the radiation and ischemia-reperfusion injury, cardiomyopathy, and cancer.