US Patent No. 7,650,848 issued for "Surface topographies for non-toxic bioadhesion control"

"Generation of functional ventricular heart muscle from mouse ventricular progenitor cells"

Recognized by the American Heart Association as one of 2009's Top Ten research studies in heart disease and stroke.

Best Poster Award at the Materials Research Society conference in Boston on November 30, 2009, for "De Novo Regeneration of the Hierarchical Extracellular Matrix with Protein nanoFabrics."

Updated web site and CV with recent patent filing.

Video from last months paper in Science of a Muscular Thin Film with an engineered layer of cardiac progenitor-derived heart muscle powering the contraction.

Technology Review reports on our work engineering heart muscle from cardiac progenitor cells.

My work on tissue engineering stem cell derived cardiac progenitor cells into functional ventricular heart muscle is published in tomorrows issue of Science. This research was conducted in Kit Parker's Disease Biophysics Group in collaboration with Ken Chien's research group at Mass General Hospital and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Read the article | Watch the video

This is an extension of my muscular thin film technology published in Science in 2007 and highlights how this methodology can be leverage to regenerate cardiac muscle from a renewable cell source.

The cardiac progenitor cell (CPC) derived muscular thin film I engineered is a major highlight of the research and the current press coverage.

Please check out the following links to learn more about this exciting development:
Harvard Science (with video)
Boston Globe (with video)
Harvard Gazette
Scientific American
ABC News via Reuters
Associated Press
US News and World Report

Exciting work on cardiac regeneration will be published in an upcoming issue of Science

Kit Parker's deployment to Afghanistan has been covered by two recent articles
Harvard prof leaves lab for Afghan deployment (Associated Press)
Working to lift the fog of war (Harvard Gazette)

- Updated CV to include recent patent activity.
- Minor updates made to web page layout.

6th International Ascona Workshop on Cardiomyocyte Biology

Presented an invited presentation on cardiac tissue engineering

Biophysical Society Meeting in Boston

Oral presentation on the tissue engineering of cardiac muscle

Paper Published

Engineering High-Density Endothelial Cell Monolayers on Soft Substrates
Feinberg AW, Schumacher JF and Brennan AB. Acta Biomaterialia (In Press, 2009).

Materials Research Society Fall Meeting in Boston

Oral presentation on the coupling between sarcomere alignment and tissue-scale muscle contractility.

Biomedical Engineering Society Conference in St Louis

Presented a poster on the application of Muscular Thin Films as an in vitro contractility assay for cardiac muscle.

Paper Published

Systematic Variation of Microtopography, Surface Chemistry and Elastic Modulus and the State Dependent Effect on Endothelial Cell Alignment
Feinberg AW, Wilkerson WR, Seegert CA, Gibson AL, Wilson LH and Brennan AB. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research: Part A, 86A (2), 2008, pgs. 522-34.

Book Chapter Published

Micropatterning Approaches for Cardiac Biology
N. A. Geisse, A. W. Feinberg, P. Kuo, S. P. Sheey, M. Bray and K. K. Parker, in Micro and Nanoengineering of the Cell Microenvironment: Applications and Technologies. Eds. Khademhosseini, Borenstein, Takayama and Tomer, Artech House Publishers, 2008, pp 341 - 360.

BBC Radio Interview

BBC Radio features Muscular Thin Films on its "Leading Edge" weekly science program hosted by Geoff Watts.

The full program can be streamed from the BBC, Kit and I discuss the Muscular Thin Films at 21:25 into the program. Or download the clip directly in MP3 format.

Tour of Switzerland I just returned from Switzerland where I gave three talks covering the latest research on Muscular Thin Films and Protein microFabrics. Special thanks to Prof. Andre Kleber at the University of Bern and Dr. Michael Smith at ETH Zurich for making this possible.

Protein microFabrics and microThreads for Tissue Engineering Applications
Feb 4, ETH Zurich

Engineered Boundary Conditions Direct Cardiac Myogenesis and Contractility
Feb 6, USGEB 2008, EPFL

Engineering Myocardium in 3D: Towards Regeneration and In Vitro Disease Models
Feb 8, University of Bern

Technology Review has a feature article on the Muscular Thin Film technology developed in the Disease Biophysics Group at Harvard University. The article is entitled "Tiny Living Machines" and is the featured DEMO in the January/February 2008 issue. It describes the process of making MTFs in the lab and hints at some of the exciting new research we are working on. Check it out online... Tiny Living Machines: Devices made of heart tissue could screen drugs and power implantable robots.

Also...

The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University has Muscular Thin Films listed as one of the School's Innovations of 2007!

A lot of updates to add from the past month...

Best Poster Award at the Materials Research Society conference in Boston on November 28, 2007, for "Engineering the Contractility of Myocardial Sheets." Thanks to all my co-authors for their hard work.

Article Published Online via Early View entitled "Systematic Variation of Microtopography, Surface Chemistry and Elastic Modulus and the State Dependent Effect on Endothelial Cell Alignment."

Journal Cover of Biofouling: The Journal of Bioadhesion and Biofilm Research based on work I did in conjunction with Jim Schumacher and Tony Bnrennan during my PhD research at the University of Florida. The image illustrates the multiple surface properties (chemistry, topography, mechanics, tortuosity and surface energy) that affect biofouling.

Muscular Thin Films on "What A Year!" Educational Web Site. A well done article has been written to describe muscular thin films to high school aged students.

The Science Museum of London has a nice article about muscular thin films on the Antenna section of their web site.

Also, checkout the latest issue of Technology Review for a short blurb about muscular thin films.

Upcoming poster and oral presentations at the fall conference of the Biomedical Engineering Society in LA will describe new results in cardiac tissue engineering and development of an in vitro contractility assay based on muscular thin film technology.

The MTFs paper received some additional news coverage from MIT's Technology Review and at Chemistry World.

BBC radio covers MTFs in the weekly Science in Action news segment, skip to 21:38 to hear Kit being interviewed. Or download as an MP3.

digg it, two articles on MTFs are popular right now on the Science section of digg.com.
http://digg.com/health/Muscular_films_promise_bodyparts_and_biomachines
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Muscle_powered_films_create_a_micro_cyborg

Science has a short news article on the MTFs at their ScienceNOW site.

The full article on MTFs in this weeks Science issue is now available.

Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences where the research was done has posted a blurb on their front page including a link to a modified version of the MTF video that won 2nd prize at last years MRS film festival.

A manuscript on Muscular Thin Films will be published in an upcoming issue of Science