Engineering Cell Fate and Function

Keystone Symposia, Silverthorne CO

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Engineering Cell Fate and Function, organized by Darrell J. Irvine, Sangeeta N. Bhatia and Christopher S. Chen. The meeting will be held in Olympic Valley, California from April 6-11, 2014. This meeting will bring together scientists and engineers to discuss key challenges in engineering biological systems across length and organizational scales: from single cells, collections of cells, to tissues and organs. The goal will be to highlight key advances being made at each of these length scales with a view to fostering discussion of strategies for engineering biological systems across these scales. In accord with this goal, the meeting features talks starting at methods for engineering single cells and moving toward technologies shaping the function of entire multicellular tissues, and will bring together a diverse group of scientists who do not typically interact, ranging from physicists to bioengineers to stem cell biologists. This meeting will be timely and unique in pairing with its complementary sister Keystone Symposia meeting on Stem Cells and Reprogramming, and highlighting the many exciting potential applications for cell and tissue engineering beyond regenerative medicine including cell therapy, diagnostics, and tissue models for drug screening and the study of disease pathology. The meeting's goal is consistent with the NIBIB mission of integrating the physical and engineering sciences with the life sciences to advance basic research and medical care.