Top 3 grants in regenerative medicine: September 2022
This month’s top grants in regenerative medicine, sourced from Dimensions, include projects on: patient-specific Alzheimer’s Disease models, a plant-derived biomaterial platform for culturing human stem cells and an investigation into the transformation of bone healing mechanomics with age.
Check out this month’s top grants in regenerative medicine:
- Patient-specific Alzheimer’s Disease models
- The transformation of bone healing mechanomics with age
- A chemically defined plant-derived biomaterial platform for culturing human stem cells
Patient-specific Alzheimer’s Disease models
The non-genetic causes of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are not well understood as animal models are dissimilar to the human brain and current approaches to culturing brain cells do not provide an accurate representation of AD. To overcome these challenges, researchers are looking to stem cells. Utilizing stem cells from AD patients can provide brain tissue models with the same genetic makeup as the original human source. This project aims to design a cell culture environment similar to natural brain tissues to directly observe the spread of AD to better understand the underlying mechanisms of the disease.
Funding amount: US$28,000
Funding period: 1 September 2022 – 31 August 2025
Funder: Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
Research organization: Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada)
The transformation of bone healing mechanomics with age
The process of bone healing is mechano-sensitive, therefore mechanical stimuli can either encourage or hinder fracture healing. This project will employ a multi-scale, multi-disciplinary approach to unravel the mechanisms underling the mechanobiology of bone healing and investigate how this mechano-sensitive healing process is compromised with age. This research will spatially map the local mechanical environment, the molecular profile of single cells and the local nanostructure within the fracture callus. The research will quantify how individual cells and subcellular elements respond to mechanical stimulation to build bone. It will also enable investigation of the potential pathways in which the formation of bone nanostructure is influenced by mechanical stimuli. Overall, the insights gained from this investigation will aim to provide novel therapeutic targets and new strategies to promote bone repair.
Funding amount: US$212,000
Funding period: 1 September 2022 – 31 August 2024
Funder: European Commission (EC)
Research organization: ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
A chemically defined plant-derived biomaterial platform for culturing human stem cells
This research aims to develop a decellularized plant-based biomaterial to be utilized in the culture of human stem cells. Plant leaf production is scalable and sustainable, and this, along with the diversity of morphology and length and their biocompatibility make them a potentially useful biomaterial for human stem cell manufacturing. This project will characterize plant-derived biomaterials and develop methodology to coat them in a synthetic polymer to modify the surface and make the resulting cell-biomaterial conducive to human cell culture. With this knowledge, the impact of surface topography and the adaptable surface chemistry on cellular alignment and differentiation may be further investigated.
Funding amount: US$565,000
Funding period: 1 September 2022 – 31 August 2025
Funder: Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences (NSF MPS)
Research organization: University of Wisconsin – Madison (USA)
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