PL-02 HUMAN STEM CELL-BASED ARTICULAR TISSUE ENGINEERING: FROM JOINT REGENERATION TO JOINT-ON-A-CHIP

Joint diseases such as osteoarthritis (OA) are highly prevalent and represent the primary cause of physical disability. Despite the success of restorative surgeries and procedures, functional biological reconstruction of diseased/traumatized articular tissues has not been achieved. This unmet medical need is primarily due to insufficient understanding of disease mechanisms and challenges in engineering functionally mature articular tissues. Recent technological advances have led to functional tissue engineering at both the macro- and micro-scales, with the former focusing on regenerative implants and the latter on disease modeling and drug testing. This lecture will provide an overview of the promises and challenges of stem cell- and smart biomaterial-based approaches in articular tissue engineering. Topics to be covered will include: (1) biological optimization of stem cell differentiation and maturation; (2) design and fabrication of biomimetic 3-dimensional biomaterial scaffolds; and (3) development of the miniJoint , a human stem cell-derived joint-on-a-chip system, for studying OA pathogenesis and screening candidate therapeutics. These studies illustrate the power of stem cell-based tissue engineering in generating functional biological implants and physiologically relevant OA models. Multidisciplinary, convergent collaborative approaches, with particular attention to both physiology and structure, are critical to achieve success in functional tissue engineering, to “repair, restore and re-create” articular tissues.