August 29, 2014
Korkut Uygun is slated to speak at World Transplant Congress
The Conference will be held last week of August in San Francisco, CA, in the State of the Art Symposium. The talk will be titled: Organ Bioengineering and Regeneration as the New Holy Grail for Organ Transplantation.

August 11, 2014
Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering Ranked No. 1 again by ISI
For over a decade, articles in the Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering (ARBME) were cited more often than papers in any of its peer journals, according to ISI`s 2013 Journal Citation Report, giving it the highest Impact Factor in its peer group. The ARBME had a 2013 Impact Factor of 12.450 placing it #1 in the category "Engineering, Biomedical," of 75 journals, and #3 among all engineering journals (905 in total). Professor Martin Yarmush serves as the founding editor-in-chief of the ARBME which published its first volume in 1999.

July 30, 2014
Professor Yarmush Honored With The 2015 Robert A. Pritzker Distinguished Lecture Award
BMES Board of Directors has selected Professor Martin Yarmush as the recipient of the 2015 Robert A. Pritzker Distinguished Lecture Award. The BMES Robert A. Pritzker Distinguished Award is awarded each year to recognize outstanding achievements and leadership in the science and practice of biomedical engineering. The award lecture is schedule for October 7, 2015 at the BMES Annual Meeting in Tampa, FL..

July 24, 2014
Yarmush honored with The 2015 BMES Robert A. Pritzker Distinguished Lecture Award.
Professor Martin Yarmush of CEM has been honored with The 2015 BMES Robert A. Pritzker Distinguished Lecture Award.

July 1, 2014
Bruinsma talks about his work on co-authored Nature Medicine paper on CTV.
Bote Bruinsma featured on CTV News Channel as they covered his recent co-authored publication on anti-freeze organ preservation.

July 1, 2014
Dr. Berendsen and Bote Bruinsma supercooling paper published in Nature Medicine
Dr. Berendsen's supercooling liver paper in Nature Medicine paper is published, and carried by major news agencies including the BBC. Congrats Tim and Bote!

May 11, 2014
Bruinsma receives best talk honors at HMS Surgery Research Day
Bote Bruinsma was given the best talk award at the Harvard Medical School Surgery Research Day, for his presentation titled "Supercooling of the liver for extended preservation in Transplantation." HMS Surgery Research Day enables residents at MGH, BWH, Boston Children's and BIDMC hospitals to present cutting edge research, and most presentations are Nature/Science/NEJM papers-to-be. Cheers Bote!

May 10, 2014
Bruinsma to give podium talk at HMS
Bote Bruinsma, MD PhD student at CEM, is slated to give a talk at Harvard Medical School Research Day on supercooling liver grafts for extended preservation.

April 24, 2014
Work of Professor Korkut Uygun’s lab e-published in American Journal of Transplantation
First author Bote Bruinsma’s work, “The Subnormothermic Machine Perfusion for ex vivo Preservation and Recovery of the Human Liver for Transplantation” describes the first successful attempt at using the practical subnormothermic approach for resuscitating human liver grafts, and is the largest human liver perfusion study to date with 7 grafts.

April 19, 2014
First Sustainability Hackathon at Harvard organized by Abhinav Bhushan.
Abhinav Bhushan organized the First Sustainability Hackathon at Harvard. A brainchild of Abhinav, the hackathon was a daylong competition where participants tackled topics including chemical management in labs, food waste, business and private engagement, and Boston’s car-centric commuter culture. The diversity of the participants contributed to the success - MBA, engineering, and science students/postdoctoral fellows, as well as entrepreneurs took part in the event. The event was made possible in part by a grant from the Harvard Office for Sustainability, space from the Harvard i-lab, and support from local businesses. For further news of the event, please click here and here.

April 9, 2014
Alex Golberg Wins ABA Award
CEM postdoctoral Fellow Alex Golberg won the Robert B. Lindberg Medal for the Best Scientific Paper by Nonphysician from American Burn Association (ABA). The award was given for Alex's presentation, "Pulsed Electric Fields for Burn Wound Disinfection" which was delivered on March 27, 2014 at the ABA's 46th Annual Meeting in Boston, MA.

April 8, 2014
Dr Kerimian wins prestigious AASLD award
Dr. Negin Kerimian wins the AASLD/LIFER Clinical and Translational Research Fellowship in Liver Diseases Award. The 1-year $75,000 award will support Dr. Kerimian’s studies in developing a supercooling method to extend and enhance the preservation of human liver grafts under the mentorship of Professor Korkut Uygun. Congrats Negin!

March 21, 2014
Alvin Chen Awarded NIH F31 Grant
BME graduate student, Alvin Chen, was awarded a 2-year, $66,230, NIH F31 Predoctoral Fellowship to support his PhD dissertation project entitled, "A Low-Cost Compact and Portable Robot for Autonomous Intravenous Access using Near Infrared and Tactile Image Guidance". Alvin is leading a team of students developing a portable and lightweight autonomous medical robot that combines 3D near-infrared vein imaging and computer vision software to perform blood draws and other IV procedures for situations where medical professionals are unable to successfully access the veins. Alvin is advised by Professors Martin Yarmush and Tim Maguire.

March 18, 2014
Uygun speaks at 1st Congress on Stem Cell and Cell Therapies
Basak Uygun is invited to speak at the 1st Congress on Stem Cell and Cell Therapies in Kocaeli, Turkey

March 7, 2014
BME Graduate Student Wins Postdoctoral Fellowship Award
BME graduate student Serom Lee was awarded a one-year $40,000 postdoctoral fellowship grant from the American Fund for Alternatives to Animal Research (AFAAR). Serom’s research is focused on developing a microfabricated in vitro alternative to animal testing to screen skin sensitizers. Her proposal was acknowledged for its commitment to scientifically superior, more humane non-animal research and the promise it holds for science, animal well-being and human health. Serom is advised by Professors Martin Yarmush and Rene Schloss.

February 17, 2014
Research Performed by BME Graduate Students Spotlighted
Research performed by BME graduate students Nir Nativ, Alvin Chen, and Gabriel Yarmush on a new automated method for monitoring the state of steatotic livers was featured on the February cover of the journal Liver Transplantation. The key finding of the paper is that a combination of lipid droplet size and lipid droplet nuclear dislocation significantly improves the ability to separate small droplet versus large droplet steatosis. This study is a first step towards standardizing pathologists` scores among different medical centers, which will help in the overall process of determining graft transplantability. The full paper describing this work can be found in the Liver Transplantation 2014; 20: 228-236. The work was supervised by Professors Martin Yarmush and Francois Berthiaume.

February 6, 2014
Research Performed by Nir Nativ and Gabriel Yarmush Spotlighted
Research performed by BME graduate students Nir Nativ and Gabriel Yarmush on "methodology to defat steatotic (fatty) hepatocytes" was featured on the December 2013 cover of the Journal of Hepatology. The paper described a novel macrosteatotic hepatocyte culture system and the use of this system to explore the impact of accelerated macrosteatosis reduction on cell viability and the recovery of cell function. The motivation for the work is that macrosteatotic livers generally fail to transplant and are thus discarded from the donor pool. The full paper describing this work can be found in the Journal of Hepatology 2013; 59: 1307--1314. The work was supervised by Professors Martin Yarmush and Francois Berthiaume.

February 1, 2014
Drs. Berendsen and Uygun have a new paper accepted for publication in Nature Medicine
We are under a moratorium and can’t comment on the contents – but it will be supercool!

January 24, 2014
Uygun receives Junior Investigator Award
Basak Uygun received Junior Investigator Award from the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS). Her work was highlighted as the top contribution at the ASTS Winter Meeting in Miami, FL.

December 17, 2013
Uygun receives $750,000 R00 grant from NIDDK
Basak Uygun received an R00 grant from NIDDK for her project "Use of Discarded Organs for Preparation of Liver Grafts" totaling $750,000 over three years.

November 12, 2013
Korkut Uygun speaks at the Boston Turkish Biologists' Colloquium at Harvard School of Public Health.
Professor Uygun addressed an audience of biologists with a talk describing the development of discarded human organ reengineering technologies.

October 24, 2013
Yarmush Listed Among Top 20 Translational Researchers
Professor Martin Yarmush was recently listed among the top 20 translational researchers in 2012. In a listing of patents associated with individual researchers, Professor Yarmush was ranked 13th with a total of 13 patents. The brief article can be found in Nature Biotechnology, Volume 31, Page 784, 2013.

October 3, 2013
Bruinsma wins award at Harvard Medical School
Bote Bruinsma, MD PhD student at CEM, was awarded “Clinical Research Day Abstract Award” at MGH for his work “The First Application of Subnormothermic Machine Perfusion for the ex vivo Support and Recovery of Discarded Human Liver Grafts for Transplantation”. Cheers Bote!

September 20, 2013
Bhushan awarded an NIH Career Award (K99/R00)
Dr. Abhinav Bhushan joins 6 other CEM investigators, who over the past five years have been awarded NIH K awards. With total funding of $~180K over the first two years, Dr. Bhushan aims to develop a new functional genomics approach for studying gene and protein expression involving the use of primary cells for the simultaneous temporal expression profiling of multiple genes and proteins using downstream protein capture techniques in a highly parallel, high throughput format.

September 1, 2013
Organ Solutions LLC Receives Phase I STTR Award for Rescuing Injured Human Livers
OS, a small business co-founded and advised by Professor Korkut Uygun, is developing technologies to re-engineer currently unusable livers for transplantation. The company focuses on organ preservation technologies, and this first grant will fund it’s efforts in developing novel machine perfusion technologies to rejuvenate grafts from non-heart beating donors.

August 13, 2013
Patent issued to Professor Yarmush and colleagues
A patent was issued to Professor Martin Yarmush, Deepak Nagrath, and Marco Avila-Elchiver entitled, "Designing synthetic biological circuits using optimality and nonequilibrium thermodynamics"(US Patent # 8,504,948). The invention describes a method for designing biological circuits using the lowest specific dissipation energy (SDE) as a major determinant of feasibility.

August 2, 2013
Nima Saeidi led a team of investigators with a seminal publication in Science
A team of researchers from the CEM, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Shiners Hospital for Children has identified a new mechanism for resolution of diabetes following weight loss surgery. Among the key findings was the fact that a metabolically active small intestine plays a central role in diabetes resolution, rather than specific hormones, as had been thought previously. The report appeared in the July 26, 2013 issue of Science.

August 1, 2013
Yarmush Receives Grant Supplement from NIH
Professor Martin Yarmush and collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh and Vanderbilt University have been awarded a 1-year, $176,000 supplement to their parent grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) for a project entitled, "A 3-D Biomimetic Liver Sinusoid Construct for Predicting Physiology and Toxicity". The goal of this project is to construct a microfluidic liver module which mimics the functions and responses of the human liver, with readouts designed to indicate both normal liver function and toxic responses. The supplement provides additional support for integrating the liver-on-a chip platform with Vanderbilt`s pumping, controller, integrated casing and electrochemistry technologies.

July 26, 2013
New cross-disciplinary work published in PLos One
The study from Professor Korkut Uygun’s lab, “Resuscitation of Ischemic Donor Livers with Normothermic Machine Perfusion: A Metabolic Flux Analysis of Treatment in Rats” describes a first-of-kind analysis that brings together metabolomics and transplantation to understand how machine perfusion enables energy recovery in injured livers that are recovered from donors after cardiac death.

July 1, 2013
McCarty awarded Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA)
Willam McCarty is awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Reserach Services Award (NRSA) for his project titled: "Hepatic Zonation In a Microfluidic Liver Model: Application To Drug Metabolism" more.

June 17, 2013
Parekkadan speaks at the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) Public Form
Professor Biju Parekkadan addressed an audience of the general public with an interest in stem cell and regenerative medicine with a podium talk entitled: "Stem Cell Devices: Software meets Hardware". 

June 07, 2013
Patent issued to Professors Yarmush, Maguire, and Schloss
A patent was issued to Professors Martin Yarmush, Tim Maguire and Rene Schloss entitled, "Alginate polyelectrolyte encapsulation of embryonic stem (ES) cells" (US Patent # 8,435,787). The invention describes an alginate polyelectrolyte encapsulation system in which the encapsulated ES cells are capable of differentiating into hepatocyte lineage cells in the absence of embryoid body intermediates or growth factor supplementation.

May 21, 2013
Uygun selected as Claflin Distinguished Scholar for 2013
Basak Uygun was selected as a Claflin Distinguished Scholar for 2013 by the executive committee of research at MGH for her project "Transplantable Liver Grafts Using Embryonic Stem Cell Derived Hepatocytes". The award consists of research support of $114,000 for two years. Her achievement was celebrated at the annual Shore Fellowship Celebration more.

April 3, 2013
Patent issued to Professor Parekkadan
A patent was issued to Professors Biju Parekkadan and Martin Yarmush entitled, "Compositions, Methods, and Devices for Treating Liver Disease" (US Patent # 8,172,784 B2). The invention describes a system comprising an extracorporeal bioreactor containing a population of undifferentiated multipotent stromal cells (MSCs) for the treatment of organ injury.

April 1, 2013
Parekkadan is selected as Young Mentor of the Year at Harvard Medical School
Professor Biju Parekkadan was recognized as a Young Mentor of the Year at HMS. He was one of few selected out of ~400 applicants more.

February 12, 2013
Work in the Berthiaume and Yarmush Labs Published in PNAS
Research performed in the laboratories of Professors Francois Berthiaume and Martin Yarmush in collaboration with researchers at Araim Pharmaceuticals was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The collaborative study showed that systemic administration of ARA290 (a peptide from the protein erythropoietin) after burn injury is highly effective in reducing burn wound expansion by preventing microvascular thrombosis and progressive tissue necrosis. Thus ARA290 may be a promising therapeutic approach to prevent the conversion of partial- to full-thickness burn injuries. The full paper describing this work can be found in PNAS Early View, February 11, 2013.

February 11, 2013
BME and CIVET Awarded NCIIA Grant
The Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and the Center for innovative Ventures of Emerging Technologies (CIVET) have been awarded a 2-year, $34,500 grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). The program entitled"Biomedical Engineering E-Teams for Healthcare Innovation" aims to implement a new senior design experience for Biomedical Engineering (BME) students focused on the integration of BME/medicine with translation of innovation to industry. The NCIIA program, which will commence in September 2013, will dovetail and add value to BME and CIVET's NIH supported R25 program, "Merging Innovation, Translational Medicine, and Entrepreneurship in Biomedical Engineering Senior Design" which commenced in September 2012. Professor Martin Yarmush directs the NCIIA program together with Francois Berthiaume and Susan Engelhardt who serve as co-PIs.

January 1, 2013
Parekkadan receives a Shriners Foundation Grant
A three-year grant totaling $540,000 was awarded to Professor Parekkadan for his application describing an "An Engineered Pro-Protein Therapy for Immunity and Infection Control in Burn Care."

January 1, 2013
Korkut Uygun Named Deputy Director of Research at Shriners Boston Hospital
Dr. Uygun will oversee daily operations of the research department and serve as the deputy for Director of Research Dr. Toner. Research Faculty at Shriners Boston Hospital is funded by about $4M by the Shriners Foundation and about $6M by the NIH, NSF, DOD and other funding agencies.

December 1, 2012
New Seminal Review published in Nature Reviews - Gastroenterology and Hepatology
Doctors Basak and Korkut Uygun, and Professor Martin Yarmush review the state of the art in whole liver engineering for liver tissue.

November 28, 2012
Work in the Parekkadan Lab Published in PNAS
Research performed in the laboratory of Professor Biju Parekkadan in collaboration with researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the University of Bergen in Norway, on the development of subcutaneous implants of nanoscale hydrogel scaffolds coated with human bone marrow stromal cells as artificial bone marrow cavities, was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It is anticipated that this ectopic bone marrow system will be useful for the study of cancer cells during engraftment and retention in bone marrow, a common metastatic site. The full paper describing this work can be found in Proc Nat'l Acad Sci 2012; 109: 19638-19643.

November 12, 2012
Yarmush to Serve on Editorial Board of "Organogenesis"
Professor Martin Yarmush will serve as a member of the Executive Advisory Editorial Board of a new journal named "Organogenesis". The journal covers significant advances of all aspects of organ development, and also includes research into tissue engineering, artificial organs, and organ substitutes.

September 10, 2012
BME and CIVET Awarded 2nd Department of Education GAANN Grant in 3 years
The Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and the Center for innovative Ventures of Emerging Technologies (CIVET) have been awarded a second 3-year $399,798 training grant from the U.S. Department of Education program of Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN). The award entitled, "Graduate Training in Emerging Areas of Human Relevant Microphysiological Systems" will provide 3 full graduate fellowships per year for the next 3 years. The main objectives of the program are: 1) to continue to build a vibrant and sustained graduate training program with strong emphasis on cutting-edge research and research translation, and 2) to ensure that our research thrusts are leading edge and integrative so that we develop a distinct breed of professionals that can capitalize on the latest scientific findings and translate them into technological developments in areas such as microscale engineering of human physiological systems, or "Human-on-a-Chip." In this regard, numerous federal agencies (NIH, NSF, DARPA, EPA, etc.), and industry as a whole, have identified a critical need for improved microfabricated physiologic systems to predict efficacy, safety, and toxicology outcomes for candidate therapeutics, and to serve as enhanced disease model systems for basic and applied research. Professor Martin Yarmush serves as principal investigator of both GAANN Programs.

August 1, 2012
Sentien Biotechnologies Receives Phase II SBIR Award for Kidney Injury Program
This Phase II SBIR grant advances pre-clinical work of Sentien's lead kidney injury program into large animal testing. Professor Parekkadan is a consultant to Sentien on the award. 

July 30, 2012
Yarmush Receives $2.2M Grant from NIH
Professor Martin Yarmush and collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh have been awarded a 2-year, $2.2M grant from National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the NIH for a project entitled, "A3-D Biomimetic Liver Sinusoid Construct for Predicting Physiology and Toxicity". The goal of this project is to construct a microfluidic liver module which mimics the functions and responses of the human liver, with readouts designed to indicate both normal liver function and toxic responses. This grant is part of "The Tissue Chip for Drug Screening Initiative", the first interagency collaboration launched by NCATS, which aims to develop 3-D human tissue chips that accurately model the structure and function of human organs, such as the lung, liver and heart.

July 23, 2012
Parekkadan receives prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE)
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) named Professor Biju Parekkadan as a 2011 PECASE recipient. He was chosen as one of 19 in the country by HHS. Initially started in 1996 to support young academic innovators, the PECASE is the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. A 2.5 year supplemental award was made by HHS in addition. The full press release  from the Office of the White House, including a statement from President Barack Obama, is here.

July 20, 2012
Lee awarded an NIH Career Award (K99/R00)
Dr. Jungwoo Lee joins 5 other CEM investigators, who over the past five years have been awarded NIH K awards. With total funding of $~180K over the first two years, Dr. Lee aims to use a humanized bone marrow analogue that he developed to understand which cellular components govern metastatic potential into the analogue. The project is a joint effort between the CEM and the MGH Cancer Center.

July 19, 2012
Korkut Uygun speaks at the State-of-the-Art Symposium
At the State-of-the-Art Symposium in the 24th International Congress of the Transplantation Society in Berlin, Germany, Professor Uygun addressed an audience of transplant surgeons with a talk describing the creation of functional liver grafts and their transplantation to address the donor organ shortage.

July 2, 2012
Work in the Yarmush Lab Spotlighted
Research performed in the laboratory of Professor Martin Yarmush on the use of nanoporous gold to deliver drugs that can modulate cellular responses was featured on the March 2012 cover of Advanced Healthcare Materials. The goal of this work is to ultimately produce indwelling electrodes composed of drug-loaded nanoporous gold which can reduce the fibrotic reaction that frequently accompanies implantation. The paper`s results clearly demonstrated that drug release from nanoporous gold coatings could significantly reduce cellular proliferation. The full paper describing this innovative work can be found in Advanced Healthcare Materials Volume 1, Pages 172-176 (2012).

June 29, 2012
Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering Ranked No. 1 again by ISI
For the tenth year in a row, articles in the Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering (ARBME) were cited more often than papers in any of its peer journals, according to ISI's 2009 Journal Citation Report, giving it the highest Impact Factor in its peer group. The ARBME had a 2011 Impact Factor of 12.214 (and a 5-year Imact Facor of 15.667) placing it #1 in the category "Engineering, Biomedical," of 72 journals, and #3 among allengineering journals (898 in total). Professor Martin Yarmush serves as the founding editor-in-chief of the ARBME which published its first volume in 1999.

June 19, 2012
Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering Ranked No. 1 by ISI
For the fourth year in a row, articles in the Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering (ARBME) were cited more often than papers in any of its peer journals, according to ISI's 2005 Journal Citation Report, giving it the highest impact factor in its peer group. Professor Martin Yarmush serves as the editor-in-chief of the ARBME which published its first volume in 1999.

June 19, 2012
Professor Korkut Uygun awarded $1,957,000 NIH R01 grant
The project will develop, for developing a mathematical method to predict the survival of liver grafts after transplantation. Current approaches to do predict survival are general and based on overall populations statistics, leading to overly conservative predictions and cause hundreds of transplantable organs to be discarded; this

June 8, 2012
Korkut Uygun gave a podium talk at the National Science Foundation
Held by the Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) Division in Baltimore, MD, the CBET Grantee Conference was attended by hundreds of engineers funded by the CBET division in the last three years.

May 30, 2012
Korkut Uygun speaks at the Harvard Medical School
Tissues seminar, on the development of recellularized liver grafts. The talk was attended by over a hundred biologists and medical researches in the greater Boston area.

April 9, 2012
Yarmush Receives $100K Grant from DOD
Professor Martin Yarmush has been awarded a 1-year, $100K grant from US Army Medical Research Agency for a project entitled, "Development of Immunotherapy-Laden Scaffolds for the Prevention of Traumatic Injury Infection". The overall goal of the project is to develop an implantable dendritic cell-based alginate construct that will serve as a lymphoid-like organ with immunoactive and antimicrobial properties.

April 5, 2012
Yarmush Receives $540,000 Grant from NJCBIR
Professor Martin Yarmush and collaborators Professors Rene Schloss and David Shreiber have been awarded a 3-year, $540,000 grant from the New Jersey Commission on Brain Injury Research for a project entitled, "Mesenchymal Stem Cells as Traumatic Brain Injury Therapeutics". The overall goal of the project is to evaluate the therapeutic potential of encapsulated MSCs in organotypic slice cultures of hippocampus and cortex which have been subjected to traumatic injury, and then to utilize the information gained in vitro to evaluate effects in a cortical contusion animal model.

April 1, 2012
Sentien Biotechnologies Receives Phase I SBIR Award for Liver Injury Product
Sentien, a small business co-founded and advised by Professor Parekkadan, was awarded a NIH Phase I SBIR grant to expand the companies' platform cell therapy technology into a new therapeutic indication - acute liver injury. Sentien's extracorporeal stem cell therapy deliver systemic exposure to a stem cell product for combined anti-inflammatory and regenerative support. 

March 1, 2012
Parekkadan promoted to Assistant Professor at Harvard
Dr. Biju Parekkadan is the director of the cell and molecular engineering division at CEM.

January 17, 2012
Discovery in the Yarmush Lab Published in Nature Biotechnology
Research performed in Professor Martin Yarmush`s lab at Rutgers University and Massachusetts General Hospital has yielded a novel strategy to protect the liver from drug-induced injury. The paper receiving advance online publication in the journal "Nature Biotechnology", reports that inhibiting gap junction communication can protect against damage caused by liver-toxic drugs such as acetaminophen. More information is available at http://news.rutgers.edu/medrel/news-releases/2012/rutgers-massachusett-20120113

January 5, 2012
Microfluidics Work Spotlighted
Work on a microfluidic bioreactor for increased active retrovirus output was spotlighted in The January 2008 issue of the Chemical Biology supplement of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In this study, a team led by Professor Martin Yarmush describes a novel microdevice for the continuous production of retroviral vectors in a commonly available packaging cell line. This microdevice platform for virus production enables a high degree of control over environmental conditions, a capability that is critical for optimizing production of retrovirus and other viral vectors for gene therapy applications. The full article describing this work is published in Lab-on-a-Chip 2008, 8: 75-80.

November 1, 2011
Announcing the establishment of The Cell Resource Core (CRC)
Co Founded by Drs. Korkut Uygun Maria-Louisa Izamis, the resource core will provide animal and human liver cells and associated services to researchers. The CRC focuses on fresh mouse, rat and human hepatocytes – a detailed price list can be found here. CRC is funded by a CIMIT/DOD accelerator award totaling $500k.

October 18, 2011
Yarmush Receives 2011 Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Division Award
Professor Martin Yarmush was awarded the 2011 FPBD award. The selection committee recognized his singular contributions in regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, metabolic engineering, and functional genomics, as well as his intellectual and professional leadership, and loyalty and commitment to AIChE and Division 15 in particular. The award was presented during the annual AIChE meeting in October 2011.

September 14, 2011
Yarmush Receives $700K NIH SBIR Grant
Professor Martin Yarmush and colleagues at a new biotech start-up, Nivarta, Inc., have been awarded a 2-year, $700,000 NIH Phase I SBIR grant entitled, "Development of a discovery platform based on microfluidics and fluorescent cell functional assays?. The overall goal of the project is to develop a discovery platform based on microfluidics and functional cell assays that is suitable for screening hundreds of proteins or small-molecule compounds simultaneously in a cost-effective and high throughput manner. The project is based on Prof. Yarmush?s Living Cell Array technology which combines reporter cells, microfabrication and microfluidics, and automated time-lapse microscopy.

September 12, 2011
Yarmush Receives $2.3 Million NIH Grant
Professor Martin Yarmush has been awarded a 4-year, $2.3M NIH grant entitled, "Recellularization of Liver Bioscaffolds". The project is focused on the development of techniques for decellularizing livers that are unsuitable for transplantation, and recellularizing them with stem cell derived hepatocyte-like cells. It is hoped that these new bioscaffolds will show more promise than the synthetic scaffold approach that has not yielded much success over the past 20 years.

August 1, 2011
Parekkadan receives NIH Bioengineering Research Project Grant (R01) 
Dr. Biju Parekkadan has been awarded a 4-year, $3M NIH grant entitled, "Artificial Humanized Stem Cell Niches". This project, supported by the NIBIB, is to develop a bioengineered stem cell niche including the manufacturing, monitoring, and testing of the implant in rodents. This implantable microenvironment is designed to allow for controlled and higher-throughput study of bone marrow related physiology and disease.

July 18, 2011
Third Annual Methods in Bioengineering Conference: BioMethods Boston a Rousing Success
The CEM and Horizon House Publishers hosted the Third Annual Methods in Bioengineering Conference called “BioMethods Boston” on Thursday and Friday, July 14 and 15, 2011 at the Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School. The event, which focused on numerous applications in biomedical engineering, drew in more than 250 attendees, 24 exhibitors and over 60 poster presentations. Representatives from academia included graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty. The industry was well represented by an array of researchers, executives, accountants, lawyers, and sales representatives. Highlights of the event included outstanding keynote presentations, and several workshops emphasizing cutting-edge technologies and ways to improve grant applications to the NIH. The conference was co-sponsored by 3 NIH Research Resources and several academic and industrial institutions.

July 21, 2011
CEM receives 5-year NIH grant
CEM team of Martin Yarmush, Basak Uygun and Korkut Uygun have been awarded a 4-year, $2.5M NIH grant entitled, "Recellularization of Liver Bioscaffolds". This project, a competing renewal of the previous ARRA grant, is focused on the development of techniques for decellularizing livers that are unsuitable for transplantation, and recellularizing them with embryonic stem cell derived hepatocyte-like cells. It is hoped that these new bioscaffolds will show more promise than the synthetic scaffold approach that has not yielded success over the past 20 years. 

April 30, 2011
CEM in vivo flux analysis technique highlighted
The methodology for evaluating organ behavior, with application in burn-induced hypermetabolism, developed by Dr. Izamis and colleagues was highlighted in April’11 issue of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Volume 108 , page FMvi.

April 21, 2011
Yarmush Receives 2011 Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Division Award
Professor Martin Yarmush was awarded the 2011 FPBD award. The selection committee recognized his singular contributions in regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, metabolic engineering, and functional genomics, as well as his intellectual and professional leadership, and loyalty and commitment to AIChE and Division 15 in particular. The award will be presented during the annual AIChE meeting in October 2011

April 19, 2011
Yarmush receives Harvard Catalyst Fund Award for development of diabetes assay
Professor Martin Yarmush was among 7 awardees of 190 applications solicited by the Harvard Institute of Translational Immunology of a one year $180,000 grant. Dr Yarmush’s project will take advantage of molecular biology and microfabrication techniques in order to detect autoantibody levels with great sensitivity. This achievement would enable the detection of the onset of Type 1 diabetes far earlier, allowing the use of interventions designed to deter disease progression. Investigators on this project include: Drs. Shyam Bale, Tania Konry, Monica Casali, Erkin Seker, and Abhinav Bhushnan.

April 14, 2011
Hoang receives scholarship to attend Fourth Annual GHDx Course
Dr. Anh Hoang, a post-doctoral fellow in the Global Health Group has been selected to receive a scholarship to attend the the Fourth Annual GHDx Course on Point of Care Diagnostics for Global Health to be held at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, Washington, USA, June 27 through July 1, 2011."

March 26, 2011
CEM CTC capture technology highlighted
The circulating tumor cell technology developed by Professor Toner and colleagues was highlighted in March’11 issue of Nature Medicine, Volume 17, page 266.

March 25, 2011
Uygun awarded an NIH Career Award (K99/R00)
Dr. Basak Uygun joins 4 other CEM faculty, who over the past five years who have been awarded NIH K awards. With total funding of $930,000 over five years, Dr. Uygun aims to achieve complete “recycling” of discarded donor organs and create transplantable liver grafts via decellularized whole organs.

March 21, 2011
Uygun speaks at Summit in Innovation in Health
Dr. Korkut Uygun was among numerous high profile speakers at a conference held by Ege University in Izmir, Turkey and attended by scientists, physicians and pharmaceutical companies from Turkey and the US, as well as members of the Turkish Congress and Ministers. The summit focused cultural and legislative issues in collaborative work in enhancing biomedical and pharmaceutical innovations.

March 4, 2011
Herringbone CTC capture technology is to be deployed to cancer research institutions
In addition to its deployment at MGH, the CTC chip will be in use at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and MD Anderson Cancer Center by the 3rd quarter of 2011.

March 2, 2011
Uygun promoted to Assistant Professor at Harvard
Dr. Korkut Uygun is the director of the organ reengineering group at CEM.

February 28, 2011
Fernandez-Suarez organized a symposium on New Diagnostics for Infectious Diseases: From Bench to Bedside
Dr. Marta Fernandez-Suarez organized a one-day long symposium at Harvard Medical School that brought together the main actors in the field including Dr. Aydogan Ozcan (UCLA), Dr. David Alland (NJMS) and Dr. Samuel Sia (Columbia U), and attracted large numbers of students, faculty and staff from the Boston area.

February 20, 2011
MGH and Johnson & Johnson signs a 5 year plan to develop the next generation of CTC capture devices
An agreement has been signed that aims to utilize inertial focusing in microfluidic devices to attain higher sensitivity and purity in CTC capture. J&J will be investing $30 Million to fund the research and development at MGH.

February 15, 2011
Uygun promoted to Instructor at Harvard Medical School
Dr. Basak Uygun leads the whole-organ tissue engineering studies at CEM.

November 2, 2010
Uygun gives keynote speech at Wayne State University
Dr. Korkut Uygun was selected to give the talk at 10th annual Graduate Research Symposium at Wayne State University. Dr. Uygun was also the first student chair of the symposium in 2002, during his PhD studies at Wayne State.

September 2, 2010           
Lee et al. receives highlight in Cell Biology 2010 Press Book, American Society of Cell Biology 50th Conference
Each year, the scientist members of the American Society of Cell Biology organize parallel “peer-screening” panels to go through all abstracts submitted for mini-symposium presentation and to identify those with the strongest news value or that illuminates a novel aspect of cell biology for the general public. Dr. Jungwoo Lee’s work, entitled “Transplantable Bone Marrow Analogues to Enhance Recovery of Bone Marrow Failure” was chosen from more than 1100 mini-symposium submissions as one of this year’s “Novel & Newsworthy Top Picks”.

August 30, 2010
Yarmush appointed Editor-in-Chief of NanoLIFE
Professor Martin Yarmush has been appointed Editor-in-Chief for Medical Sciences of a new international journal entitled, NanoLIFE. The journal addresses critical issues in nanoscience and nanomedicine that impact both the scientific community and the general public. NanoLIFE aims to reach researchers in a broad spectrum disciplines including materials, chemical, biological and medical sciences, and engineering. It will also highlight breaking trends in these fields, and hopefully cultivate a new integrated community with shared interests in frontier research and higher education.

August 30, 2010
Global Health Group receives a major grant from the Department of Defense
A DOD grant was awarded to the CEM which aims to expand the current point-of-care diagnostics platform from tuberculosis to other major pathogens causing community-acquired pneumonia.

August 2-13, 2010
Fernandez-Suarez gives an invited lecture at the Tuberculosis African Academic Initiative workshop
Dr. Marta Fernandez-Suarez gave a lecture at this event that was held in Durban, South Africa is designed to train heads of the Infectious Diseases departments and heads of the National Laboratories of many African doctors in current and emerging diagnostics for tuberculosis.

July 14, 2010
Yarmush receives grant from the US ‎- ‎Israel Binational Science Foundation
Professor Martin Yarmush and Prof‎essor ‎Anat Herskovits of ‎Tel Aviv University have received a $60,000 grant from the US ‎- ‎Israel Binational Science Foundation for their proposal entitled, "Live Inflammatory Responses to L. monocytogenes". The goal of the project is to apply a novel high throughput living cell array system to characterize activation mechanisms of innate immune signaling pathways by L. monocytogenes. The U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation promotes scientific relations between the U.S. and Israel by supporting collaborative research projects in a wide area of basic and applied scientific fields, for peaceful and non-profit purposes.

July 1, 2010           
Konry receives the Shriners Hospitals Fellowship
Dr. Tania Konry received a Shriners Hospitals Fellowship for her proposal titled “Dendritic Cell-Laden Scaffolds for the Prevention of Post-Burn Infection.” The three-year fellowship aims to develop cell-based constructs that serve as a bioartificial “lymphoid-like” organ with distinct immunoactive properties for reducing and preventing post-burn infection.

July 1, 2010
Sentien Biotechnologies, Inc,. a start-up company founded by CEM faculty, receive NIH and NSF Phase I SBIR Award and a Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Program Grant
Sentien Biotechnologies, Inc. a start-up company founded by CEM faculty, was awarded ~$1M in small business innovation research grants for the development of a mesenchymal stem cell-based device for the treatment of acute organ failure.

June 29, 2010           
Seker receives MGH Fund for Medical Discovery Award
Dr. Erkin Seker is a recipient of the MGH Fund for Medical Discovery Award for his proposal titled “Low-impedance and drug-elting neural electrodes for diagnostic and therapeutic applications.” The one-year fellowship aims to utilize a nanoporous coating technology to engineer electrodes that can monitor neural electrical activity with high sensitivity, as well as deliver pharmaceuticals to control adverse tissue response.

July 16, 2010
Wong awarded the Damon Runyon-Merck Cancer Research Fellowship
Dr. Ian Y. Wong is one of eighteen recipients nationwide of a three-year postdoctoral fellowship, which supports promising young scientists conducting innovative basic and translational cancer research. He is developing a new experimental platform for characterizing how cancer cells migrate in response to biochemical signals and 3-D structural architectures.

June 13, 2010
Uygun et al. published in Nature Medicine, carried by major news sources
Dr. Basak Uygun and other researchers in the organ reengineering group have successfully created a transplantable tissue-engineered liver graft in the lab. The work has been highlighted by the BBC and many other news channels.

May 10, 2010
Yarmush and colleagues receive $1.9 million NIH award
Professor Martin Yarmush and colleagues at Northeastern U (Shashi Murthy, PI), U Toronto (Milica Radisic, co-PI), and Harvard U (John Mayer, co-PI) have been awarded a 3-year, $1.9 M, to develop innovative microfabrication techniques for isolating and cultivating stem cells for use in the replacement of damaged tissue. The Yarmush lab focus is to study how stem cells, extracted from hair follicles in normal skin, can be used to potentially repair severely burned skin by growing new hair follicles and sweat glands.

May 7, 2010
Izamis successfully defends her dissertation
Dr. Maria-Louisa Izamis has defended her dissertation entitled “Optimization of Hepatocyte Procurement Through ex vivo Liver Perfusion”. Dr. Izamis was supervised by Drs. Martin Yarmush, Korkut Uygun and Francois Berthiaume.

May 1, 2010
CEM collaborative work funded by Harvard Catalyst
Our collaborative work with Dr. Kashayar Vakili at Children’s Hospital in Boston for transplantation of recellularized liver grafts has been funded by the Harvard Catalyst Program.

April 6, 2010
Elmoazzen gives a talk at Harvard Faculty Seminar
Dr. Heidi Elmoazzen gives a lecture titled "Options for fertility preservation: A novel Vitrification Technique Using Quartz Capillaries for the Cryopreservation of Oocytes” at Harvard Faculty Seminar, Topics in Bioengineering (TIB) seminar series at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

April 1, 2010
Parekkadan receives Mentored Scientist Research Award (K01), National Institutes of Health
Dr. Biju Parekkadan received a Mentored Scientist Research Award from the NIDDK/NIH for his application entitled “Peripheral Tissue Antigen Display by Mesenchymal Stem Cells”.

February 17, 2010
Lee Receives Massachusetts General Hospital Scientific Advisory Committee Research Award
Dr. Jungwoo Lee’s work entitled “Transplantable Bone Marrow Analogues to Enhance Recovery of Bone Marrow Failure” was selected by the Scientific Advisory Committee of Massachusetts General Hospital with a Research Award. Only 5 of these awards are given each year to researchers at the entire hospital.

January 1, 2010
Parekkadan receives a Grant from the Broad Foundation for Medical Research
A two year grant for ~$250,000 entitled "Antigen-Specific Mesenchymal Stem Cell Grafts for Colitis" was awarded to Dr. Parekkadan. The grant capitalizes on his first public reports of a therapeutic effect of stem cell transplantation in mice with inflammatory bowel disease (Parekkadan et al. Stem Cells 2008, Gastroenterology 2010), an approach that has now advanced into clinical trials by industry. This project is focused on understanding a novel mechanism of action of this cell therapy. 

December 3, 2009
Yarmush research featured as cover article
Professor Martin Yarmush's research in the area of bionanorobotics is highlighted as a cover article in the November issue of the journal "IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology". The article entitled, "Biological Force Measurement in a Protein-Based Nanoactuator" describes the mechanical force exerted by a nanoactuator due to pH actuation from a statistical mechanics and free energy of conformational change viewpoint. The investigators used molecular dynamics techniques to show that the nanoactuator, based on the coiled-coil leucine zipper portion of a yeast transcriptional activator protein, can generate mechanical forces of the order of 20-40 pN upon pH modulation. The work is a collaboration with Professor Dinos Mavroidis of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northeastern University, and was supported by grant from the NSF and NASA.

November 19, 2009
Uygun awarded research grant
Dr. Korkut Uygun’s grant, “Development of combined Animal and Mathematical Models of Hypermetabolism in Children with Burn Injury, has been funded by the Shriners Hospitals for Children for two years and $120,000.

October 10, 2009
Uygun awarded NSF research grant
Dr. Korkut Uygun’s grant, “Liver Reengineering,” has been funded by the NSF with a grant of $300,000for three years.

October 1, 2009
Yarmush receives 2-year NIH grant
Professor Martin Yarmush has been awarded a 2-year, $828K NIH grant entitled, "Recellularization of Liver Bioscaffolds". The project is focused on the development of techniques for decellularizing livers that are unsuitable for transplantation, and recellularizing them with embryonic stem cell derived hepatocyte-like cells. It is hoped that these new bioscaffolds will show more promise than the synthetic scaffold approach that has not yielded success over the past 20 years.

September 1, 2009
Yarmush and colleagues receive NSF Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation Grant
Professor Martin Yarmush and colleagues at Texas A&M (Juergen Hahn, PI; Arul Jayaraman, co-PI; and Carl Laird, co-PI) have been awarded a 4-year, $1.48 M, high-profile, NSF award entitled, "Extracting Population and Stochastic Effects on Signaling Activity from Transcription Factor Profiles". The project is focused on the development of a new computational framework that will enable investigators to partition stochastic and cell population effects with the ultimate goal of developing improved models of signal transduction pathways. The Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) program is NSF's bold five-year initiative to create revolutionary science and engineering research outcomes made possible by innovations and advances in computational thinking. CDI research outcomes are expected to produce paradigm shifts in our understanding of a wide range of science and engineering phenomena and socio-technical innovations that create new wealth and enhance the national quality of life.

July 31, 2009           
Berdichevsky receives MGH Tosteson fellowship
Dr. Yevgeny Berdichevsky's proposal to study axon sprouting and seizures in epilepsy was chosen by the MGH ECOR for a Tosteson Posdoctoral Fellowship Award funded by the Massachusetts Biomedical Research Corporation (MBRC).

July 16, 2009
Yarmush receives $2.5M NIH grant
Professor Martin Yarmush received a 4-year $2,578,970 grant from the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to develop a novel subzero non-freezing protocol to extend the viable preservation times of hepatic tissues and organs using a supercooled medium. The work intends to generate a new field of supercooled storage, and also establish quantitative standards for evaluating the organ viability following preservation. While the focus of the current work is on the liver, the protocols established will also serve as the basis for subzero nonfreezing preservation of all organs and tissue engineered products.

May 27, 2009
Yarmush appointed to editorial board of two journals
Professor Martin Yarmush has been appointed to the editorial boards of the "Journal of Hepatology" and the "Journal of Tissue Engineering". Both are open-access and peer-reviewed forums for the publication of scientific research in the fields of hepatology and tissue engineering and their clinical application.

April 10, 2009
Uygun awarded MGH Junior Faculty Award
Dr. Korkut Uygun’s work on cadaveric liver utilization has been awarded by Massachusetts General Hospital Executive Committee on Research (ECOR).

March 22, 2009
Yarmush receives 2-Year grant from Lifeblood Medical and DOD
Professor Martin Yarmush received a $447,816 grant from Lifeblood Medical Inc. and DOD to test Lifeblood Medical's perfusion solutions for preservation of ischemic livers. The proposed work has significant military relevance, as a superior preservation modality would enable transportation & allocation of donor organs to the troops on foreign battlegrounds, a task which cannot be achieved currently.

September 1, 2008
Berdichevsky receives NIH fellowship
Dr. Yevgeny Berdichevsky is awarded an NIH/NIMH F32 Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship to develop a microfabricated interface for organotypic neural circuits.

August 4, 2008
Parekkadan et al. article featured in Stem Cells Journal
Dr. Biju Parekkadan’s manuscript entitled paper "Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Ameliorate Autoimmune Enteropathy Independently of Regulatory T Cells" published in Stem Cells was selected as a Highlighted Paper. One paper from each research section of Stem Cells is selected for this honor.

August 1, 2008
Yagi receives Presidential Award from the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease
Dr. Hiroshi Yagi was the lead author of the study that the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease (AASLD) selected entitled "Therapeutic Potential of Human Bone Marrow-Derived Stem Cell Based Liver-Assist Device for Fulminant Hepatic Failure" for a Presidential Award at the 50th Anniversary Meeting.

July 9, 2008
Yarmush Receives NSF Grant
Professor Martin Yarmush received a three-year $280,367 grant from the National Science Foundation to support his gene therapy related research focusing of the development of novel methods for engineering improved retrovirus stability.

June 4, 2008
Parekkadan invited to be Graduation Student Speaker at Harvard-MIT Division of HST
Dr. Biju Parekkadan, based on his research accomplishments in cellular engineering, delivered the student address to the 2008 graduating class of the Harvard-MIT Division of HST. His speech encouraged his fellows to focus on big problems that face the community and continue the innovative spirit of HST.

April 16, 2008
Yarmush receives NJCBIR Grant
Professor Martin Yarmush received a two-year $327K grant from the New Jersey Commission on Brain Injury Research for a project entitled, “A Novel Organotypic Model of Traumatic Brain Injury”. The funding will support Dr. Yarmush's goal to develop an in vitro traumatic brain injury model combining organotypic slices with microfabricated devices that integrate mechanical deformation and multiple electrode arrays. This new model will provide researchers working in the field of traumatic brain injury with the capability to perform real-time and long-term evaluation of molecular and functional events in the axons following mechanical deformation.

March 1, 2008
Uygun promoted to Instructor at Harvard Medical School
Dr. Korkut Uygun leads the cadaveric organ utilization studies at CEM.

Feb 10, 2008
Uygun has been awarded an NIH Career Award (K99/R00)
Dr. Korkut Uygun will receive a total funding of $930,000 over five years for his project that aims to develop computational models and perfusion systems for resuscitation of marginal donor livers.

January 5, 2008
Microfluidics work highlighted
Work on a microfluidic bioreactor for increased active retrovirus output was highlighted in The January 2008 issue of the Chemical Biology supplement of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In this study, a team led by Professor Martin Yarmush describes a novel microdevice for the continuous production of retroviral vectors in a commonly available packaging cell line. This microdevice platform for virus production enables a high degree of control over environmental conditions, a capability that is critical for optimizing production of retrovirus and other viral vectors for gene therapy applications. The full article describing this work is published in Lab-on-a-Chip 2008, 8: 75-80.

November 19, 2007
Uygun awarded research fellowship
Dr. Korkut Uygun’s fellowship, “Identification of Therapeutic Intervention Targets in Post-Burn Hypermetabolic Response” has been funded by the Shriners Hospitals for Children for $180,000.

October 19, 2007
CEM microfluidics work highlighted 
The CEM’s work on “A microfluidic bioreactor for increased active retrovirus output” will be highlighted in a future issue of the Chemical Biology supplement of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In this study, a team led by Professor Martin Yarmush describes a novel microdevice for the continuous production of retroviral vectors in a commonly available packaging cell line. The microdevice platform for virus production enables a high degree of control over the culturing and environmental conditions, and such devices will be useful for optimizing and evaluating retroviruses and other viral vectors for gene therapy applications. Authors of the study include Halong Vu, Yawen Li, Monica Casali, Daniel Irimia, and Zak Megeed. The full article describing this work will be published in Lab on a Chip.

October 17, 2007
Berdichevsky receives Shriners Hospitals for Children fellowship
Dr. Yevgeny Berdichevsky is a recipient of a Shriners Hospitals for Children fellowship award to study effects of hormones on stress response in the medial prefrontal cortex.

September 25, 2007
Parekkadan’s research work carried by major news sources
Dr. Biju Parekkadan and other researchers in Professor Yarmush’s lab have developed a new way to treat liver failure by dampening the immune response using stem cells taken from the bone marrow. Major news wires including Medical News Today and BBC News have featured the work. The full article was published in the open access journal PLoS ONE. 

September 21, 2007
Yarmush’s work featured
Professor Martin Yarmush’s work on using adhesive stencils to make mouse embryonic stem (mES) cell aggregates of specific sizes ranging from 100 mm to 500 mm in diameter was featured in Chemical Biology, Issue 9, 2007. Chemical Biology is a news magazine which draws together coverage from all Royal Society of Chemistry publications, providing a snapshot of the latest developments in chemical biology. The full paper describing this innovative work was published in Lab on a Chip volume 7, page 941, (2007).

July 30, 2007
Parekkadan receives BMES award
Dr. Biju Parekkadan, a graduate student supervised by Professor Martin Yarmush, was selected as the recipient of the BMES 2007 Graduate Research Award for his paper “Bone Marrow Stromal-Derived Molecules as Immunotherapeutics”. Biju, one of 5 such awardees, will receive complimentary registration for the 2007 BMES Meeting, stipend and travel expenses.

June 4, 2007
Tolboom awarded poster prize
Dr. Herman Tolboom’s poster entitled, “Recovery of Warm Ischemic Liver Grafts with Normothermic Extracorporeal Perfusion” was selected for a cash award in the Second Annual MGH Research Fellows Poster Celebration held on Friday June 1, 2007. Dr. Tolboom is supervised by Professors Martin Yarmush and Francois Berthiaume.

April 23, 2007
Yarmush selected to present Beyer Lecture at U Wisconsin
Professor Martin Yarmush gave the Karl Beyer Lecture at a symposium of the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Wisconsin. This lecture is in honor of Karl Beyer, MD, PhD, an early dual-degree graduate of UW-Madison and pioneer in the development of agents to treat hypertension and edema. Professor Yarmush’s presentation was entitled, “Critical Technology Development for the Bioartificial Liver”.

April 14, 2007
CEM genomics and metabolomics work highlighted 
The CEM’s work on genomics and metabolomics is highlighted in the May 1 issue of Biotechnology and Bioengineering. In this issue, a team led by Professor Martin Yarmush and François Berthiaume report the use of DNA microarray analysis (genomics) coupled with metabolic flux analysis (MFA) of isolated perfused livers in order to shed light on the hypermetabolic state that occurs in the rat liver following severe systemic trauma. In the most severe injury model, the two ‘omics’ techniques produced relatively similar snapshots of hepatic hypermetabolism. But, comparisons of the more benign models showed marked differences in the interpretations drawn from genomics and fluxomics approaches. These results highlight the importance of taking precaution when interpreting the results from single ‘omics’ experiments. Authors of the study include Scott Banta, Murali Vemula, Tadaaki Yokoyama, and Arul Jayaraman.

April 10, 2007
Di Carlo awarded ACS fellowship
Dr. Dino Di Carlo was awarded a 2 year postdoctoral fellowship from the American Cancer Society for his proposal "Point-of-care Microfluidic Cell Sorting System for Circulating Tumor Cells." The aims of the project include development of an improved microfluidic system for isolation of tumor cells from blood with increased sensitivity, efficiency, and throughput. One of the long-term outcomes of this work may be a simple blood-based screening system for detecting cancer in high-risk individuals before symptoms become readily apparent. Dr. Di Carlo is supervised by Professor Mehmet Toner.

March 23, 2007
Yarmush and Megeed awarded DOD Cancer Grant
Professors Martin Yarmush and Zak Megeed (of Harvard Medical School) have been awarded a one-year Concept Award through the Ovarian Cancer Research Program at the Department of Defense. This grant, totaling $131,250, will fund the development of targeted nanoparticles for the treatment of ovarian cancer.

November 28, 2006
Megeed awarded ovarian cancer research grant
Dr. Zak Megeed has been awarded a one-year Concept Award through the Ovarian Cancer Research Program at the Department of Defense. This grant, totaling $131250, will fund the development of targeted nanoparticles for the treatment of ovarian cancer.

November 15, 2006
CEM genomics work featured
The CEM’s work on a “Living Cell Array”, a microfluidic device that allows the study of real-time gene expression in living cells, was featured in Chemical Biology. Chemical Biology is a news magazine that draws together coverage from all Royal Society of Chemistry publications, providing a snapshot of the latest developments in chemical biology. The full paper describing this innovative work was published in Lab on a Chip.

October 12, 2006
Rege and Patel win prostate cancer training awards 
CEM Research Fellow Dr. Kaushal Rege and Graduate Student Suraj Patel have been awarded postdoctoral and predoctoral fellowships, respectively, from the Prostate Cancer Training Program at the Department of Defense. The awards, supervised by Professor Martin Yarmush, will focus on the development of targeted protein and viral therapeutics for the treatment of prostate cancer. 

September 25, 2006
Yarmush wins NIH Stem Cell Award
Professor Martin Yarmush has been awarded a one-year NIH Career Enhancement Award for Stem Cell Research. This award, totaling $186,780, is meant to provide investigators with the necessary resources to enable them to take full advantage of stem cells in their research.

June 19, 2006
Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering ranked No. 1 by ISI
For the fourth year in a row, articles in the Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering (ARBME) were cited more often than papers in any of its peer journals, according to ISI’s 2005 Journal Citation Report, giving it the highest “impact factor” in its peer group. Professor Martin Yarmush serves as the editor-in-chief and Professor Mehmet Toner as associate editor of the ARBME which published its first volume in 1999.

June 6, 2006
Yarmush to speak at joint NIH-NSF conference
Professor Martin Yarmush is an invited plenary speaker at a joint NSF-NIH workshop on “Engineering Approaches to Energy Balance and Obesity: Opportunities for Novel Collaborations and Research”. Professor Yarmush’s presentation is entitled Systems Approaches for Characterization of Metabolism: Metabolic Flux Analysis and the Living Cell Array.

May 16, 2006
Toner to speak at “California: Prosperity Through Technology” Symposium
Professor Mehmet Toner was an invited speaker at the fifth annual “California: Prosperity Through Technology” industry research symposium held at UC Irvine on May 15 -17, 2006. The symposium focused on engineering in medicine and LifeChip Technologies, with special emphasis on engineering in neuroscience and rehabilitation, nano- and micro-technologies for cancer, bioMEMS for implantable medical devices, and array technologies for genomic, proteomic and cellular screening and diagnostics.

April 27, 2006
Stem cell research receives commercialization award
Professor Martin Yarmush received a $20,000 award from the Rutgers Technology Commercialization Fund. The award will support translation of patented research involving the use of alginate encapsulation as a means to control hepatic differentiation of stem cells.

March 14, 2006
Yarmush receives New Jersey High Tech Hall of Fame Award
Professor Martin Yarmush was recently selected to be inducted into the New Jersey High-Tech Hall of Fame. The New Jersey High-Tech Hall of Fame was created to highlight the high-tech achievements of business leaders, researchers, educators, and government officials, who, through their leadership and accomplishments, have made New Jersey one of the premier high-tech states in the nation.

October 15, 2005
Yarmush is plenary speaker at Annual AIChE Meeting
Professor Martin Yarmush has been chosen to give a plenary presentation representing the Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering division at the Annual AIChE Meeting in Cincinnati. Professor Yarmush’s talk is entitled, “Tissue Engineering: Microsystems and Macrosystems for Functional Genomics, Metabolic Engineering, Stem Cell Differentiation, and the Treatment of Liver Disease.” 

October 3, 2005 
Toner and Toth's work featured in the Boston Globe
Professors Mehmet Toner and Tom Toth’s research on freezing human oocytes was featured in a Boston Globe article entitled “A Baby Step Closer to Freezing Eggs”. The team has made considerable progress in pioneering the use of intracellular trehalose to protect eggs during their freeze-thaw cycle.

June 15 2005 
Tilles speaks at ASME conference
Dr. Arno Tilles was an invited speaker at the Third International Conference on Microchannels and Minichannels held in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Tilles' presentation was entitled “Engineering a Bioartificial Liver Device”.

March 7, 2005 
Tompkins' genomics work featured in PNAS
Dr. Ronald Tompkins and co-workers published a milestone paper showing patterns of different gene expression in trauma patients from multiple clinical centers versus healthy individuals. This work is a first step toward discriminating between patients who recover after injury versus those who develop complications that lead to organ failure and death, and customizing the treatment to the individual genome.