Alfred E.Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering - Seminar series

Speaker: Ben Almquist, Senior Lecturer (US equivalent: Associate Professor) in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London and Director of the Biomedical Technology Ventures Programme

Talk Title: Pilfering Patient Pharmacies -“ Using Bioinspiration to Drive Wound Repair

Abstract: Over the course of our lives, our bodies break down and we fix them. Everything from a scraped knee to a broken bone can be mended. But there is always the chance that the task becomes a bit too much for our bodies to handle. Whether it is a chronic skin wound that has persisted for twenty years in an elderly individual, a diabetic ulcer that is trying hard to steal a life, or simply a major traumatic injury that is simply too much for our bodies to handle, the impact is astounding. Chronic non-healing skin wounds have been called a silent epidemic, drive social isolation and depression, and consume 3-5% of national healthcare budgets. Meanwhile, non-union fractures of bones, such as the tibia, score lower in quality-of-life surveys than acute myocardial infarction, AIDS, and T1 diabetes, with a one in two chance of not returning to work. Somewhat surprisingly, there is an astounding lack of innovative approaches carrying clinical approval for treating defective wound healing; in the area of skin repair, the last FDA approved pharmacologic treatment for chronic wounds was approved over 20 years ago! In this talk, I will discuss our push to develop new methods for promoting tissue repair for both chronic and acute wounds, using bioinspiration to link together insights from materials science, nanotechnology and biology to enable new possibilities for driving tissue repair. This goal has led us to establish a new method for controlling drug delivery based on cellular traction forces, while also allowing us to ask the question – can our bodies simply give us the helping hand we need to heal our tissues? 

Biography: Dr Ben Almquist is a Senior Lecturer (US equivalent: Associate Professor) in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London and Director of the Biomedical Technology Ventures Programme. His research aims to develop new methods for seamlessly bridging the interface between engineered materials and devices and biological systems, with a major focus on tissue repair and regeneration. Dr Almquist has been recognized as an Emerging Investigator in Biomaterials Science and is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals, and Mining. Before joining Imperial College, Dr Almquist spent time as a NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Solider Nanotechnologies at MIT and was a Research Fellow in the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University. He has an MS and PhD in Materials Science from Stanford University and a BSc in Materials Science from Michigan Technological University.

Host: Eun Ji Chung

Location: Corwin D. Denney Research Center (DRB) - 145

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Carla Stanard