Decellularization: Leveraging a Tissue Engineering Technique for Food Production.

The edible nature of many plants makes leaves particularly useful as scaffolds for the development of cultured meat, where animal tissue is grown in the laboratory setting. Recently, we demonstrated that decellularized spinach leaves can serve as scaffolds to grow and differentiate cells for cultured meat products. However, conventional decellularization methods use solutions that are not considered safe for use in food, such as organic solvents (hexanes) and detergents (triton X-100 (TX100)).

Micropatterned fibrin scaffolds increase cardiomyocyte alignment and contractility for the fabrication of engineered myocardial tissue.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, which can result in blockage of a coronary artery, triggering a myocardial infarction (MI), scar tissue formation in the myocardium, and ultimately heart failure. Currently, the gold-standard solution for total heart failure is a heart transplantation. An alternative to total-organ transplantation is surgically remodeling the ventricle with the implantation of a cardiac patch.

Learning Environments and Evidence-Based Practices in Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering.

This paper provides a synopsis of discussions related to the Learning Environments track of the Fourth BME Education Summit held at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio in May 2019. This summit was organized by the Council of Chairs of Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering, and participants included over 300 faculty members from 100+ accredited undergraduate programs. The Learning Environments track had six interactive workshops that provided facilitated discussion and provide recommendations in the areas of: (1) Authentic project/problem identification in clinical, industrial, and global settings, (2) Experiential problem/project-based learning within courses, (3) Experiential learning in co-curricular learning settings, (4) Team-based learning, (5) Teaching to reach a diverse classroom, and (6) innovative platforms and pedagogy.

Creation of a contractile biomaterial from a decellularized spinach leaf without ECM protein coating: An in vitro study.

Myocardial infarction (MI) results in the death of cardiac tissue, decreases regional contraction, and can lead to heart failure. Tissue engineered cardiac patches containing human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPS-CMs) can restore contractile function. However, cells within thick patches require vasculature for blood flow.

Creation of Laryngeal Grafts from Primary Human Cells and Decellularized Laryngeal Scaffolds.

Current reconstruction methods of the laryngotracheal segment fail to replace the complex functions of the human larynx. Bioengineering approaches to reconstruction have been limited by the complex tissue compartmentation of the larynx. We attempted to overcome this limitation by bioengineering laryngeal grafts from decellularized canine laryngeal scaffolds recellularized with human primary cells under one uniform culture medium condition.