{"id":1110,"date":"2019-01-06T22:20:01","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T03:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/?p=1110"},"modified":"2019-01-06T22:20:01","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T03:20:01","slug":"screening-of-msc-morphological-responses-to-inflammatory-signals-to-identify-optimal-conditions-for-enhanced-immunosuppressive-function","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/?p=1110","title":{"rendered":"Screening of MSC Morphological Responses to Inflammatory Signals to Identify Optimal Conditions for Enhanced Immunosuppressive Function"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u>Project Title: <\/u>Screening of MSC Morphological Responses to Inflammatory Signals to Identify Optimal Conditions for Enhanced Immunosuppressive Function<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Project Mentors<\/u><\/strong><strong>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><u>Primary Faculty Mentor (Name, Affiliation, website and Email\/Phone): <\/u><\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Ross Marklein, School of Chemical, Materials, and Biomedical Engineering<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.engineering.uga.edu\/people\/profile\/ross-a.-marklein-ph.d\">http:\/\/www.engineering.uga.edu\/people\/profile\/ross-a.-marklein-ph.d<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"mailto:Ross.marklein@uga.edu\">marklein@uga.edu<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><u>\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Project Description:<\/u><\/strong>Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have shown promise in the context of many immune diseases; however, successful clinical translation has not yet been achieved.\u00a0 In most studies, MSCs are manufactured using standard culture techniques in an environment that does not mimic that experienced by MSCs in diseased tissue (i.e. inflammation).\u00a0 Stimulation of MSCs with functionally-relevant stimuli, such as inflammatory cytokines, prior to use in <em>in vitro <\/em>and <em>in vivo <\/em>models of immune disease has been shown to enhance the ability of MSCs to suppress activated immune cells such as T cells.\u00a0 Although the effects of these inflammatory signals, such as Interferon-gamma (IFNg) and Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (TNFa), have been shown to work in different settings there is a need to optimize these preconditioning strategies for enhancing MSC immunosuppressive capacity.\u00a0 As MSC morphological response to inflammatory signals can be indicative of immunosuppressive capacity, this project aims to use high content imaging to characterize the morphological response of MSCs to a wide range of preconditioning strategies to effectively screen for the optimal concentrations to be used for enhancing MSC immunosuppression of T cells.<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><u>REU Student Role and Responsibility:<\/u><\/strong>The student will be responsible for culturing human MSCs in a high throughput manner to enable screening of large quantities of conditions using high content imaging.\u00a0 Extensive cell culture, automated liquid handling, high content imaging, and automated image analysis will be performed as part of this project.\u00a0 The results of this work will be combined with other efforts in the lab to characterize the functional capacity of MSCs stimulated with different preconditions identified from the morphological screen.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Required skills or courses for the REU student:<\/u><\/strong>The ideal student will have experience with mammalian cell (adherent) cell culture and <em>in vitro <\/em>cell assays (cell staining, ELISAs, PCR, etc.) Experience with high content imaging and automated image analysis (i.e. CellProfiler) is <u>highly\u00a0<\/u>desired, but not required.\u00a0 The ability to manage and analyze large datasets is also preferred.\u00a0Students must be entering either their junior or senior year in the Fall 2019 semester and be enrolled in a biomedical\/biochemical engineering related field.<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Expected Outcome for REU student:<\/u><\/strong>The outcome of the REU student will be foundational for many future studies performed in the Marklein Lab as the method for screening morphological responses and identifying optimal conditions is relevant to many different cell types and therapeutic strategies beyond MSCs for immune disease treatment.\u00a0 The data generated form this project will supplement additional data to help support a future publication, as well as likely provide the basis for a conference poster\/talk.<\/p>\n<p><u>\u00a0<\/u><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Project Title: Screening of MSC Morphological Responses to Inflammatory Signals to Identify Optimal Conditions for Enhanced Immunosuppressive Function \u00a0 Project Mentors: &nbsp; Primary Faculty Mentor&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-projects","category-research-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1111,"href":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions\/1111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reu.engr.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}