Reposted from Cryonet:
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 11:18:22 PST
From: "Ralph C. Merkle" <merkle@merkle.com>
Subject: Fwd: PARC Forum, 2/25 -- Matt Croughan, "Tissue
Engineering"
XEROX PARC FORUM
Thursday, February 25
4:00 - 5:00 p.m.
MATT CROUGHAN
will talk about
"Tissue Engineering: Replacement Body Parts, Replacements for
Animal Testing"
Tissue engineering has the potential to address many unmet medical and testing needs, some with markets in excess of a billion dollars per year. The first generation, tissue-engineered products are skin and cartilage. For these products, cells are seeded onto a simple biodegradable scaffold, made from woven material, and grown in a bioreactor to form a solid piece of tissue. Engineered skin tissue provides dramatic benefits for the treatment of burn victims and diabetic foot ulcers. Engineered cartilage tissue is being developed for the treatment of knee cartilage injuries.
There are many challenges to grow tissue-engineered organs that are full of cells and blood vessels, such as the liver. It will be many years before engineered, vascular organs, such as the liver, are available commercially for transplantation. However, in the meantime, engineered liver tissue is being developed as an alternative to animals for toxicology and metabolism testing of chemical compounds. Someday, trays full of microscale organs will replace rooms full of animals.
Bio:
Matt has a B.S. from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D from M.I.T., both in
chemical engineering. He worked at Genentech for ten years and
gained substantial expertise in the growth of animal cells for
commercial production of pharmaceutical proteins. Matt led the
development of the commercial cell culture process for the
production of Pulmozymetm and an upgrade of the commercial cell
culture process for the production of Activasetm. he finished his
career at Genentech as the chief scientist for the Vacaville plant,
the world's largest and most automated cell culture manufacturing
plant.
Matt left Genentech in early 1998 to start a new biotechnology company in the tissue engineering field. In collaboration with professors at MIT, Harvard, and Cornell, they are developing engineered, microscale organs for partial replacement of animal testing. While the technology is in development at the universities, Matt consults part-time for various biotechnology companies and serves as the Industrial Liaison for the Biotechnology Process Engineering Center at MIT.
This Forum is OPEN to the public.
Refreshments will be served from 3:45 to 4:00.
The George Pake Auditorium is located at Xerox PARC,
3333 Coyote Hill Road in Palo Alto, off of Page Mill Road.
>From Page Mill Road, turn South on Foothill Expressway, then right
on Hillview, and take the second entrance to the right.
Park in the large parking lot and enter the auditorium at the upper
level of the building. The auditorium is located to the left of
and down the stairs from the main entrance.
There is a map to PARC at:
http://www.parc.xerox.com/images/maptoparc.gif.
Forum Coordinator:
Ruth Rosenholtz (rruth@parc.xerox.com)
Phone: 650 812-4390
PARC Forum Web addresses:
External: http://www.parc.xerox.com/forum
Internal: http://parcweb.parc.xerox.com/events/forum
