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In This Issue:
Ali Khademhosseini, PhD, MASc Division of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Medicine
Cutting-edge. Young. Ambitious. These words can describe many remarkable people in different fields. In the world of regenerative therapeutics, they describe Ali Khademhosseini. Having already earned several prestigious honors, such as the Curtis McGraw Award of the American Society for Engineering Education and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the 36-year-old has made amazing strides in tissue engineering. His latest endeavor could come from the pages of science fiction, captivating as it is jaw-dropping.
Khademhosseini’s lab is buzzing with scientists all focused on one goal—creating pieces of living tissue that will one day redefine the landscape of organ transplantation and drug discovery.
How would you describe your work?
We are trying to address one of the major limitations in medicine, which is the lack of available transplantable organs. To do this, we aim to combine expertise from disciplines such as engineering, materials science and biology to regenerate artificial tissues that can be transplanted. Furthermore, the ability to make human tissues outside the body can be used to test for safety and efficacy of drugs prior to expensive clinical trials.
When do you think the work in your lab can be applied in a clinical setting?
There are still a great deal of challenges in trying to make regenerative therapeutics readily available clinically. It has happened to some degree for some of the simpler tissues. But it is far away from reaching its full potential.
I hope to translate some of the things we are trying to do in the lab—directing differentiation of stem cells or putting these cells in the right kind of architecture and geometries to generate functional tissues—to make a clinical impact.
How did you get into the field of tissue engineering?
My background is in engineering. As a student majoring in the field of chemical engineering, the typical thing to do was to go into the oil or other developed industries. Of course there are opportunities to make an impact in these industries, but they are usually incremental, which did not interest me much.
Therefore, when I had the opportunity to get involved in tissue engineering, I thought it was amazing to be able to use the principles of engineering and materials sciences and combine it with biology to come up with totally new and radical ways to treat patients and push medicine forward. So I was very lucky to get exposed to this kind of research early in my training.
What do you like about working at BWH?
I think Brigham and Women's Hospital is an amazing place to work because researchers like me can work closely with clinicians. Such close connections are something that you do not see in many other places. It is just an incredible experience to be able to do research in very close proximity with people who are doing the surgery, or who are doing different kinds of imaging, or treating patients on a daily basis. So I think that it is a very unique experience. I've been here a few years and have seen a steady rise in both the quantity and quality of the research. It is an incredible and wonderful place to work.
Do you know a BWH employee who is doing fascinating work, has a cool hobby or just has an interesting story to tell? If so, nominate them to be the next person featured in Personal Profile! Submit your nomination to BWHBulletin@parters.org.
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