The fundamental bottleneck of any bioprocess is the lack of real-time, on-line, in-situ, quantitative information with respect to cellular behaviour in culture. As a result, control, optimisation, and scale-up of bioprocesses are essentially manual (empirical), which results in sub-optimal productivity (i.e., inadequate cell expansion) and product quality (i.e., inconsistent cell phenotypes). To harness the immense potential of stem cells (SCS) in terms of their plasticity and expansion capabilities, the physiological activity in relation to the culture parameters (local) such as pH, dissolved oxygen, nutrients/metabolite concentrations and growth factor concentrations needs to be recorded quantitatively with the needed level of accuracy and subsequently evaluated in a biologically meaningful manner. BSEL, in collaboration with Dr. Drakakis (Bioengineering), Profs Cass and Toumazou (IBE), and Prof. Polak (TERM) is seeking to develop such a novel monitoring modality that allows the systematic development of clinically relevant culture systems and methodologies, which control and regulate stem cell self-renewal, expansion, differentiation, and death. Ultimately, such a breakthrough will lead to the engineering of reproducible, well-characterised, regenerated “designer” tissues and organs that meet the strict regulatory criteria for clinical applications. The engineering challenge involved in the fabrication of the proposed modality can only be met by the cross-fertilisation and amalgamation of expertise of cell biologists, engineers, scientists, and clinicians.
Current projects
- Integrating a novel engineered process with a real-time biosensing platform for stem cell and tissue engineering applications
- Controlling mesodermal differentiation of embryonic stem cell and its application to bone and cartilage tissue engineering
- Production of pneumocytes from embryonic stem cells using bioreactor
- Developing a 3D, high-throughput screening system for embryonic stem cells
- Integrating embryonic stem cell culture using encapsulation of ES cells and culture in bioreactors for the production of bone
- Characterisation of a Conditioned Media for Enhanced Mesoderm Differentiation
- Intelligent Stem Cell Culture Systems
Contact details
Professor Sakis Mantalaris
Head of BSEL Group
Chemical Engineering Department
Tel: +44 (0)20 7594 5601
Email:
a.mantalaris@imperial.ac.uk