TiME Courses

BIOE 598: The Tissue Microenvironment

Advanced concepts of the complexity and heterogeneity of tissue microenvironments and their role in directing cell behavior and function in health and disease. Emphasis will be on comparing and contrasting the physio-chemical rate processes that govern the function of stem cell niches and solid tumor microenvironments. Topics will include: (i) Cell migration, mitosis, apoptosis, and differentiation; (ii) Cellular responsiveness to soluble and immobilized factors that mediate interactions between cells, with extracellular matrix, and growth factor communication; (iii) Biophysical and bioengineering aspects of mechanotransduction, the process through which living cells sense and respond to their mechanical environment. Students will conduct a semester-long team project for additional credit.

Prerequisite: Prior coursework in and working knowledge of cellular and molecular biology.

BIOE 599: The Tissue Microenvironment Laboratory

This laboratory course will provide students with hands-on training in the modeling and measurement of chemical, physical, and biological parameters of tissue microenvironments in health and disease. Three 5-week modules will be offered during which groups of 3-4 students design an engineering approach for the quantitative analysis of biological analytes, biomedical images, and physiological parameters of a synthetic 3D tissue microenvironment. The first two modules will focus on engineered platforms that have been validated by program faculty, such as engineered gliomas,i and students will create a novel platform and analytical approaches for the third module. This laboratory course will provide a foundation in the application of engineering approaches for the quantitative analysis of complex biology and emergent properties in engineered tissue microenvironments and their clinical relevance. Equipment in the Cancer Center at Illinois’s Tumor Engineering and Phenotyping (TEP) Shared Resource will be utilized for the course.

Acknowledgement

NIH Verbiage

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute Of Biomedical Imaging And Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number T32EB019944. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.