Regenerative medicine is one of the great biomedical challenges of this century, requiring research at the interface of the physical and life sciences as well as engineering. Cell-based therapies for tissue and organ regeneration will involve not only stem cell biology but also the crafting of bioactive matrices to support tissue growth. This will require cutting- edge supramolecular chemistry, nanotechnology, and micro scale process engineering. In addition, understanding and regulating immune responses to regenerated tissues will be essential for long term survival and function of reconstituted organs. The most effective regenerative strategies will include not only cell-based therapies but also the development of man-machine interfaces, particularly in the case of the damaged nervous system. No single discipline is likely to be able to overcome all of the obstacles to developing techniques for repairing or regenerating damaged tissues and organs. It is therefore necessary to design and implement programs that fuse disparate disciplines into a unified effort to achieve the goals of regenerative medicine. The goal of this training program is to provide predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees with integrated interdisciplinary training in this area. The training faculty members represent 10 different departments/divisions in the Feinberg School of Medicine, 3 departments in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 2 departments/divisions at Children's Medical Research Center, and 1 department at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Collectively the preceptors include 5MD PhDs, 12 PhDs, and 3 MDs. The faculty has been carefully constituted to be able to provide oversight in critical areas for the field including stem cell and developmental biology, materials science and nanomedicine, extracellular matrix, immune tolerance to tissues, and neural engineering and robotics. It is anticipated that trainees will be drawn from six unified graduate programs at Northwestern University. Predoctoral trainees selected for the program will fulfill the rigorous requirements for the granting of the PhD degree in their respective programs. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of this research area, the training program core curriculum will have additional unique and non-traditional aspects in which both predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees will participate. The overall theme involves the wedding of bioengineering and materials science with stem cell biology and animal modeling. The goal is to train a cadre of investigators with the requisite interdisciplinary skills necessary both to overcome the barriers to organ and tissue regeneration and to translate advances in the life and physical sciences into clinical medicine. ? ? ?
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