William Murphy

Payment for services (e.g., consulting fees, honoraria, paid authorship)

Biomaterials for local regulation of growth factor signaling

Stem cells are emerging as a powerful biomedical tool, and significant applications in drug discovery, environmental toxin screening, disease modeling, and clinical cell therapy are on the horizon. Recent studies have pushed stem cells closer to these biomedical applications by improving stem cell 'biomanufacturing' processes, such as stem cell expansion, differentiation and tissue formation. Growth factors, which are specialized proteins that control how quickly stem cells grow and what they ultimately become, are among the most powerful tools for stem cell biomanufacturing. However, growth factors are also prohibitively expensive and too complex for many stem cell applications. The critical importance of growth factors, juxtaposed with the cost and regulatory hurdles they present, puts the field at an impasse. Bioengineers and physicians simply cannot continue to rely on growth factor supplements to do the heavy lifting in stem cell biomanufacturing processes. Fortunately, the growth factors that are most critical to stem cell growth and tissue formation are already being continuously produced by the stem cells themselves. They are simply not 'harnessed' in a way that allows them to influence the cells. We propose to develop biomaterials that can mitigate the need for growth factor supplements by harnessing the effects of cell-secreted growth factors. The result will be a new class of biomaterials that can accelerate stem cell growth and control what stem cells will ultimately become, even without the help of expensive and complex growth factor supplements. The approach can, in principle, be generalized to any growth factor and any stem cell type of interest. We anticipate that the proposed approach will be transformative, as it will address the most substantial cost and regulatory barriers in biomedical applications of stem cells.