Grant will help decode chemical reactions in the body

U-M researchers leading an interdisciplinary team have won a prestigious W.M. Keck Foundation grant to build microsystems, which will help scientists decode the mechanisms that guide embryo and stem cell development.

The team will explore a basic question: How do cells organize and specialize to form tissues and organs? Cells in embryos organize themselves and develop perfectly almost every time, but the devices required to study the complex signals exchanged by the cells just now are becoming possible. The $1.7 million, three-year grant will fund the development of two devices scientists hope will mimic chemical environments in the body.

Michel Maharbiz from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the School of Engineering is the principal investigator. Other team members include Cunming Duan from the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology in LSA, Marie Csete of Emory University and Erik Boczko of Vanderbilt University.

Each brings a unique capability to the project: Maharbiz is an engineer who will develop the microscale machines that will be tested on zebrafish embryos in Duan's biology lab and on embryonic stem cells in Csete's stem cell core. Boczko will design the mathematical models that will translate the ideas and results.

The systems will consist of microscale fluidic and electrochemical devices, intracellular sensors, and feedback controls capable of chemically communicating with developing embryo and stem cell cultures. There is a gap between lab experiments and outcomes in the body that presents a pressing need in biomedical research, Maharbiz says. This research will allow scientists to reproduce the body's oxygen and chemical signals in the lab.

Cell cultures currently grown in the lab are exposed to greater concentrations of oxygen than they are when they develop in the body, Duan says. One of the systems proposed will control oxygen levels in a way that mimics real physiological situations, he says.

Researchers also hope to make and test a device that allows them simultaneously to release growth signals and control the temporal and spatial concentrations of those growth signals to mimic the chemical environment of the cells inside the body. In both zebrafish embryos and human embryonic stem cells, it is likely that a small set of chemical signals called morphogens plays a central role in driving proliferation, differentiation and maturation.

In the same way the first electrical probes of the 1950s allowed scientists to create an electrical interface to unravel how neurons communicate, scientists hope these techniques will create an interface with zebrafish embryos and human embryonic stem cells in order to create models of embryo development and allow them to validate, replicate and perhaps even modify the chemical signaling underlying development of an embryo.

If successful, these technologies radically will change the way cell and embryo culture is performed, and will lead to medical research technologies that better capture the complexity of the cellular environment.

The W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 by William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company, to support pioneering discoveries in science, engineering and medical research that lay the groundwork for breakthrough discoveries and new technologies.

More Stories

• Admissions diversity efforts aided by new data
• Business Intelligence initiative gives first innovation awards
• Nutrients might prevent hearing loss in war zones, concert halls, workplace
• Cross-cultural cell phone study reveals similarities
• Grant will help decode chemical reactions in the body
• Three decades serving the most vulnerable clients
• Spotlight: Active U leader promotes positive change
• Conference: Higher ed key to changing society, economy
• Program targets alcohol and student behavior
• Scholarship & Creativity
• Photo: Lurie atrium art floats on a breeze
• Photo: Exhibition: 86 through April 26
• Photo: New Yorker's Mankoff's cartoons at 1010 South Thayer