IME and Singapore National Heart Centre (NHC) sealed collaboration agreements on 27th May 2008 to develop surface-enhanced stem cell differentiation for tissue engineering and bedside detection system for endothelial damage detection.

A Topography Study: Surface-enhanced Stem Cell Differentiation for Tissue Engineering
In this agreement IME is to design and fabricate a device to characterize controlled surface topographies on silicon wafers in micrometer dimensions to differentiate cell types. The interactions between living cells and their microenvironment have major influences on their functional behaviours. Taking advantage of this, engineered environments (particularly surfaces) hold great promises in tailoring cell functions. Stem cells are particularly prone to such an approach and the surfaces they cultured on have been found to influence and differentiate specific cell types and behaviour. These differentiated stem cells can then be used in cell therapies or tissue engineering for numerous treatments.

Singapore National Heart Center Research and Development Unit is isolating stem cells from the bone marrow to coax them into heart muscle cells. This process has potential for heart failure patients as these stem cells could be used to repair the patient’s damaged heart tissue or to ‘bridge patients’ before heart transplant.

Bedside Detection System for Endothelial Damage
Based on the National Heart Centre’s experience in cardiovascular research and endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) characterization, and IME expertise in microtechnologies and biosensors development, this project will focus on the feasibility study of an integrated portable device to rapidly detect the level of EPC in the blood of patients. The new design allows highly-efficient washing of cultured cells deposited on the chip surface and minimizes chip-to-chip variations. Their number in blood is a biomarker of clinical interest, linked to the assessment of risk factors in cardiovascular diseases. This will have therapeutic implications in the group of patients with acute myocardial infarction or heart attacks, as the ability of circulating EPCs to repair ruptured vascular plaques within the artery may impact point of care treatment of such patients.

IME and Singapore National Heart Centre (NHC) to collaborate in research development