Tissue Engineering and Organ Preservation
Our research team studies stress pathways activated by the cold as a means to improve a number of processes used in medical science and biotechnology. We have support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the purpose of developing improved protocols for the short term and long term cold storage of human cells that can be used for stem cell therapy and tissue engineering. To this end we manipulate cell stress pathways so that hypothermically-stored (4oC) and cryopreserved (-196oC) cells are protected and preserved. NIH also funds our work on methods using cryoadjuvants to improve the lethal power of freezing as used in cryosurgery. We use cell culture, western blots, cDNA microarrays, sh/siRNA and other molecular assays as tools to accomplish this research. |
