BIOE 599 The Tissue Microenvironment Laboratory: Offered in Spring, this laboratory course will provide students with hands-on training in the modeling and measurement of chemical, physical, and biological parameters of tissue microenvironments in health and disease. Three 5-week modules will be offered during which groups of 3-4 students design an engineering approach for the quantitative analysis of biological analytes, biomedical images, and physiological parameters of a synthetic 3D tissue microenvironment. The first two modules will focus on engineered platforms that have been validated by program faculty, such as engineered gliomas,i and students will create a novel platform and analytical approaches for the third module. This laboratory course will provide a foundation in the application of engineering approaches for the quantitative analysis of complex biology and emergent properties in engineered tissue microenvironments and their clinical relevance. Equipment in the Cancer Center at Illinois’s Tumor Engineering and Phenotyping (TEP) Shared Resource will be utilized for the course.
[i] Pedron, S., Becka, E. and Harley, B.A., 2015. Spatially gradated hydrogel platform as a 3D engineered tumor microenvironment. Advanced materials, 27(9), pp.1567-1572.