McGowan Institute?
August 2002 | VOL. 4 | www.McGowan.pitt.edu
Senator Santorum hosted the formal introduction of the National Tissue Engineering Center (NTEC) at the Cellomics Building on July 29. The Center will receive $2 million this year and anticipates continued support from the Department of Defense.
Participating in the ceremony (Photo: L to R): John Marburger, PhD, Science Advisor to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Senator Rick Samtorum, Alan Russell, Lester Martinez-Lopez, Major General, MC, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, and Mark Nordenberg.
The principal NTEC partners are: Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative, McGowan Institute and the Bone Tissue Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University. The Center has three focus areas:
- Cardiothoracic and Vascular Tissue Engineering Program under the leadership of Dr. Robert Kormos,
- Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering Program under the leadership of Dr. Jeffery Hollinger, and
- Wound Healing Program under the leadership of Dr. David Steed.
Other McGowan Institute News
The new McGowan Institute facilities at the Cellomics building have been completed and the furniture is being installed. The Institute's administrative offices and many of the tissue engineering research functions are occupying the new facilities. We expect occupancy to begin in mid-August. The building is at 100 Technology Drive, adjacent to the Hot Metal Bridge and is near the University's Center for Bioengineering and Biotechnology. The McGowan Institute's administrative offices and many of the tissue engineering research functions are occupying the new facilities.
In addition to the space occupied by the Institute, other organizations that will call the 2nd floor of the Cellomics building home are: UPMC Diversified Services, Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative, Kytaron Technologies and Cook MyoSite.
This is the first of two new facilities for the Institute. The new McGowan Center for Regenerative Medicine facilities located at 3025 East Carson Street will hold an Opening and Dedication Celebration on September 26th at 4:00pm. Please save the date; additional information will be forthcoming later in August, but we hope that you will add this special event to your calendar today.
Visit this site to obtain the current phone and fax listings for the McGowan Institute personnel in the Cellomics and McGowan buildings.
The 8th annual DOD Hill Day was held on July 10, 2002 in Washington D.C. The event is designed to educate members of Congress and their staffs on the nature and significance of research programs supported under the Department of Defense Science and Technology programs. The theme for the event was "Scientific Discovery and Innovation for Defense Transformation". Demonstrations of DOD-sponsored university research are highlighted at the event, but due to space limitations, only 6 demonstrations were featured.
The IMO proposal has been accepted as a demo project for DOD Hill Day. Congratulations to the McGowan Institute faculty, Drs. Federspiel and Hattler, who successfully competed for this award.
Trevor Snyder was awarded first place in the 2002 Malchesky Student Abstract Competition organized by the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs. The award recognizes the outstanding student presentation at the annual society meeting recently held in New York City. Trevor's papers addressed his work on cardiovascular device biocompatibility analysis. Trevor is a graduate student of Dr. William Wagner, Deputy Director of the McGowan Institute.
Trevor's winning paper was "Measurement of Thrombosis in Calves Implanted With a Centrifugal Ventricular Assist Device". In addition he also presented a paper entitled "Assessing Thrombosis of an Intravascular Respiratory Support Catheter". The abstracts of the papers follow. In addition to these contributions, Trevor recently published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery (Snyder TA, Watach MJ, Litwak KN, Wagner WR. "Platelet Activation, Aggregation, and Life Span in Calves Implanted With Axial Flow Ventricular Assist Devices". Ann Thorac Surg 73(6):1933-1938;2002.)
Our congratulations to Trevor for his outstanding work!
The Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative has announced their latest grant recipients. Congratulations to the McGowan Institute faculty who successfully competed for these awards.
- Bruce Doll: Enhanced Bone Growth With An Injectable Polymer Gene Delivery Vehicle
- Tao Cheng: Hematopoietic Stem Cell Expansion By Lifting Cell Cycle Brakes
- Hairong Peng: Muscle Dedifferentiation And Bone Tissue Engineering
- Robert Kormos: Cell Therapy For Sternal Wound Healing After Cardiac Surgery
- Richard Koepsel: In Vitro development of rat ovarian follicles using a novel artificial ovary
The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse has announced the creation of two new funding mechanisms:
- The University Development Fund: for projects within the universities
that have commercial potential and need some additional funding for
prototyping, development of critical data, market assessment, etc.
. - The Industry/University Collaborative Research Fund: for collaborative projects between regional companies and university investigators.
Both programs are emphasizing the following technology areas: Drug Discovery Tools and Targets; Tissue / Organ Engineering and Regenerative Medicine; Medical Devices and Diagnostics; and, Therapeutic Strategies for Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders.
Information and application materials for both programs are available at the PLSG web site. http://www.pittsburghlifesciences.com/
Both programs have a deadline of August 23.
Professor Eric J. Beckman is the recipient of the 2002 Academic Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. Dr. Beckman is the Chair of the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department and member of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Beckman's recognition is based on his development of Non Fluorous, High Carbon Dioxide -Soluble Materials. The application of carbon dioxide to chemical processing continues to elicit significant interest, as carbon dioxide generally possesses fewer environmental hazards than conventional organic solvents. At one time it was thought that carbon dioxide could simply replace many organic solvents, but subsequent research showed that carbon dioxide is a rather feeble solvent, and hence unrealistically high pressures are needed to dissolve components of interest.
The discovery during the 1990's of "carbon dioxide-philes" suddenly rendered a number of applications technically possible, greatly raising interest in carbon dioxide as a solvent. Fluorpolymers, the most promising carbon dioxide-philes, are too expensive to employ broadly and may persist in the environment. Consequently, Dr. Beckman's research has developed a set of thermodynamic heuristics for the design of non-fluorous carbon dioxide-philes. Dr. Beckman and his colleagues have demonstrated the applicability of their rules-of-thumb in the design of poly(ether-carbonates), that polymers can exhibit lower miscibility pressures in carbon dioxide than perfluorpolyethers and are biodegradable. The method of synthesis of these materials readily allows generation of surfactants and other functional molecules, opening the economical use of carbon dioxide to a variety of processes. The Beckman team has used the simple heuristics they developed to design three types of non-fluorous carbon dioxide-phile, and they expect that others will ultimately be found, greatly broadening the applicability of carbon dioxide as a solvent.
Others contributing to this innovative research include: Bob Enick, Traian Sarbu, Tom Styranec, Ralf Fink, and Dan Hancu.
The award was presented to Dr. Beckman in a ceremony on June 24, 2002 at the National Academy of Sciences, in Washington, DC. Included in the recognition ceremony were representatives from the White House, NAS, ACS and EPA.
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