NSF has made an award in support of participant travel costs and management costs associated with the "Vascular Tissue Road-mapping Workshops & Micro-gravity Impact Roundtable" being held in the Mountain View, CA, at the NASA Ames Research Center, August 20, 2016. The proposal builds upon a previous 2015 NSF BME funded workshop in which a Roadmap was created identifying pathways, milestones, and challenges toward ending the organ shortage. This workshop focuses on one of the identified milestones, "thick-tissue vascularization," which has led to NASA's launch of a "Vascular Tissue Challenge" with a $500,000 prize purse provided to the first research groups that can successfully vascularize 1 cm thick tissues with active parenchymal cells (liver, lung, heart, muscle, kidney cells.) Though much is known about possible techniques, very little is known about the possible enabling benefits of microgravity. The workshop will provide the research community pursuing this vascularization goal an opportunity to better understand the milestones along this pathway and learn more about possible enabling opportunities.
The workshop will be conducted in 3 parts: 1) a Vascular Tissue Road-mapping session, 2) a Vascular Tissue Challenge Team Summit, and 3) a Roundtable on the micro-gravity environment's impact on tissue engineering. Outputs expected include: 1) A Road-mapping Report on the Vascularization Pathway towards solutions to the organ shortage that will include identification and descriptions of specific milestones and challenges along this pathway of mutual interest to the research and funding communities; 2) A White Paper on the current state of the art in thick-tissue vascularization; 3) A White Paper on available resources and opportunities for research groups pursuing thick-tissue vascularization and 4) A White Paper on the current state of knowledge about the impacts of micro-gravity on thick-tissue vascularization. Keynote speakers and participants will be curated through the Vascular Tissue Challenge team roster, existing New Organ Advisory Board members and the thick-tissue vascularization research community. The workshop is expected to leverage new relationships for additional prizes and challenges on the bioengineering pathways toward ending the organ shortage. Ultimately, the worship will help advance the goal of making regenerated, engineered organs and tissues available to patients who need them.
