{"id":1051,"date":"2016-06-24T16:16:20","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T23:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/usc-stem-cell-researchers-receive-the-inaugural-broad-innovation-awards\/"},"modified":"2023-11-19T12:13:14","modified_gmt":"2023-11-19T20:13:14","slug":"usc-stem-cell-researchers-receive-the-inaugural-broad-innovation-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/usc-stem-cell-researchers-receive-the-inaugural-broad-innovation-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"USC Stem Cell researchers receive the inaugural Broad Innovation Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\n\n \n Press Release<\/span>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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USC Stem Cell researchers receive the inaugural Broad Innovation Awards<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
\n Cristy Lytal<\/span>\n \n June 24, 2016<\/span>\n <\/div>\n \n \n
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Dion Dickman (left), Megan McCain and Justin Ichida (Photo by Cristy Lytal)<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n \n \n \n\n<\/div>\n \n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Two teams of scientists have won the inaugural Eli and Edythe Broad Innovation Awards in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at USC. This year\u2019s competition provides $120,000 each to the teams for developing new ways to engineer and study what are known as \u201corgans in a dish\u201d or \u201corgans on a chip.\u201d
\nSince the 1950s, scientists have harvested organs from embryonic mice, and cultivated them in the laboratory to study their subsequent development\u2014which is limited and abnormal. More recently, stem cells have provided scientists with a new tool for seeding self-assembling organoids, or miniaturized \u201corgans in a dish.\u201d Stem cells have also enabled scientists to create \u201corgans on a chip\u201d by arranging various cell types on inorganic scaffolds. These rudimentary organs aren\u2019t ready for transplant, but they do provide new perspectives on mammalian organ development, repair and function.
\nPushing the boundaries of this frontier are this year\u2019s Broad Innovation Award winners.
\nOne winning team brings together Justin Ichida, assistant professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine<\/a>; Megan McCain, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and stem cell biology and regenerative medicine; and Dion Dickman, assistant professor of biological sciences.
\nIn their project, they will create a new \u201corgan-on-a-chip\u201d approach for studying amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease. This paralyzing and fatal disease damages the intersections between motor nerve cells and muscle cells, called neuromuscular junctions. Normally, motor nerve cells release chemicals into these junctions, signaling to the muscle cells to contract, and enabling movement.
\nThe team will use samples of skin or blood cells from patients with ALS to generate neuromuscular junctions on a gelatin scaffold, or \u201cchip.\u201d They will then use electrophysiological tests and high-resolution imaging to study these patient-specific neuromuscular junctions, to determine why they degenerate, and to discover potential drugs and therapies to rescue them.
\n\u201cWe hope that our neuromuscular junctions on a chip not only provide new insights into how to treat ALS, but also accelerate the study of other neuromuscular diseases,\u201d said Ichida.
\nThe other winning team unites Keyue Shen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Rong Lu, assistant professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine.
\nThe team will pioneer an \u201corgan-in-a-dish\u201d approach for studying the stem cells in bone marrow that constantly replenish the blood and immune systems. When a patient develops blood cancer or immune disease, bone marrow transplantation can sometimes offer a risky but effective cure\u2014for those lucky enough to find a matched donor.
\nIn the body, the bone marrow\u2019s stem cells, which are called hematopoietic stem cells or HSCs, constantly adjust their behavior according to molecular signals, such as oxygen and proteins in their immediate environment, or niche. The scientists suspect that the HSCs respond to not only the type, but also the spacing of these molecular signals\u2014which can be either delivered in the body fluids or presented on the surfaces of neighboring cells. The team will recreate these various aspects of the HSC niche in a dish.
\n\u201cAlthough a single HSC can expand and reconstitute the entire blood and immune system in a living organism, maintenance or expansion of HSCs in a dish remains a daunting task after decades of research,\u201d said Lu. \u201cOur project has the potential to reveal critical environmental factors and signals governing stem cell survival and maintenance\u2014which could eventually lead to a new source of HSCs for patients in need of transplants.\u201d
\nAndy McMahon, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC<\/a>, thanked The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation for its critical support of these innovative projects.
\n\u201cWe are deeply grateful to the Broads for their visionary investment, which enables USC\u2019s research community to reach across the disciplines of medicine, biology and engineering,\u201d he said. \u201cOnly through cross-disciplinary collaboration can we develop organ-in-a-dish strategies to broadly enable our progress towards better therapies for patients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":1053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[436],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-release","tag-usc-stem-cell"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUSC Stem 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