Stem cell research is on the verge of impacting many elements of medicine, but scientists haven’t yet worked out the processes needed to manufacture sufficient quantities of stem cells for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $3 million to Georgia Tech to fund a center that will develop engineering methods for stem cell production. The program’s co-leaders are Todd McDevitt, PhD, an associate professor in the Georgia Tech/Emory Department of Biomedical Engineering and Robert Nerem, director of the Emory/Georgia Tech Center for Regenerative Medicine (GTEC), which will administer the award.
“Successfully integrating knowledge of stem cell biology with bioprocess engineering and process development is the challenging goal of this program,†says McDevitt.