Bioprocessing interest group
The research on "Stem Cell Bioprocessing", is a collaboration between a bioprocess engineer and a stem cell expert, and takes place, primarily, within the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College. London. The research quality of Chemical Engineering at Imperial has been rated 5* in the last two RAE exercises, the only department in the UK to have achieved this top rating.
Chemical Engineering has recently invested £5 million (SRIF) to refurbish its biotechnology research facilities. Consequently, the Biological Systems Engineering Laboratory was established by Dr. Mantalaris (BSEL; ) with a mission to "integrate experimentation with modelling in a translational approach to biological and medical problems". The experimental work will be carried out in state-of-the art facilities within BSEL, which houses a flow cytometer/sorter, digital image analysis fluorescent microscope with 3-D image reconstruction capabilities, a dedicated, HEPA filtered cell culture room with a multitude of bioreactors, and a molecular biology facility. The unique collaboration between Dr. A. Mantalaris and Prof. Dame J. Polak, housed in the same department and co-ordinating their efforts, is in a highly competitive position to ensure that the project will progress efficiently and that Tissue Engineering therapies will reach the clinic sooner than what was predicted in the earlier days.
Dr. Mantalaris and Prof. Polak have been successful in attracting research funding from the BBSRC, EPSRC, MRC, and the DTI for their collaborative work. This joint funding has resulted in a team of post-doctoral scientists and PhD students, all located at BSEL, working on Stem Cell Bioprocessing and include a stem cell biologist (Mark Placzek) and bioengineers (Yu-Shik Hwang, Jae Min Cha, and Yunyi Kang). The cell biology aspects of the are supervised by Professor Dame Julia Polak. The engineering part of the project is supervised by Dr A Mantalaris.
Furthermore, established research links within Chemical Engineering provide further support in the areas of optimisation (Prof. E. Pistikopoulos), downstream processing (Prof. D. Stuckey) and supply chain (Prof. N. Shah). Additional collaborative links established by Dr. Mantalaris provide expertise in the development of a monitoring platform (Dr. E. Drakakis at the Department of Bioengineering, and Prof. T.Cass at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering. Finally, Dr Panoskaltsis will provide expertise on adult stem cells and clinical applications for cellular therapies including GMP facilities.
We also have a number of strong external links, both academic and industrial. Our academic collaborators include the Bioprocess Technology Institute, which is part of the A-star programme in Singapore and will allow us to further strengthen our links with them and explore any joint commercial ventures in the Far East. In addition, we will strengthen our links with the Parker H Petite Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech. We already have links with Georgia Tech and Texas Heart Institute, the latter with a novel cardiac regeneration project initiated by Drs Mantalaris and Professor Dame Polak and supported by Novathera. Both Professor Polak and Dr Mantalaris visited Georgia Tech and The Texas Heart Institute.
