主讲人简介：Dr. Bowlin is a Professor and Herbert Herff Chair of Excellence at The University of Memphis in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Bowlin’s research has and continues to focus on the application of electrospun templates for tissue engineering and tissue regenerative applications as well as developing hemostatic products, all in the pursuit of saving lives and improving the quality of life.  Dr. Bowlin’s laboratory has published extensively in these areas with 123 peer-reviewed manuscripts.  Google Scholar data shows his group’s published works have been cited 11,609 times, resulting in an H-index of 46.  To date, Dr. Bowlin has been granted 10 U.S. Patents and 32 foreign patents.  These patents have helped to start five different companies and several commercially available and FDA cleared products.  One of the he most recent technology being developed by St. Teresa Medical, Inc. has completed clinical trials for CE Marking.The latest company, Sweetbio, Inc., is developing novel guided tissue regeneration membranes.  As a result of this inventiveness and impact, he was recently inducted as a Fellow into the National Academy of Inventors.  He is also the Inaugural and current President of the International Society for Biomedical Polymers and Polymeric Biomaterials.

内容摘要：Three-dimensionalstructural elements such as electrospun templates, hydrogels, and cryogels have been fabricated to mimic the extracellular matrix of a variety of tissues, including skin, ligament, tendon, cartilage, and bone, with limited success.  More specifically, these structures are often limited with regards to cell infiltration and the tailorability of the microenvironments within the structures.  Thus, there remains a need for a flexible three-dimensional template system which could be combined with cell suspensions to promote three-dimensional tissue regeneration, and ultimately allow cells to freely reorganize and modify their microenvironment.  In this study, electrospun polymer templates were processed via mincing into branched-clusters of controlled branch lengths, imaged, and characterized with regards to fiber and branch lengths.  These branched-cluster elements in solutions represent an innovative flexible tissue regeneration template system.A custom-designed, razor-blade template blender was developed and optimized to process electrospun templates into single fibers and fiber clusters of defined branch lengths.  Process optimization showed the most effective branched-cluster formation.  Post-processing by centrifugation and filtration allowed the separation of three distinct populations of branched-cluster length solutions.The overall result from this study is the development of fibrous cluster structural elements for use as tissue engineering templates has been developed and optimized.  This method has significant potential for further tailorability in several aspects, including fiber composition (i.e. polymer blends), fiber size (polymer concentrations), branched-cluster lengths, final branched-cluster concentrations, and the capacity for the layering of varying branched-cluster populations to create stratified tissue mimics.  Future work will involve culture with various cell types in order to evaluate the potential of these branched-cluster structural elements.

讲座语言：英语