Kilian receives NSF CAREER Award to study somatic cell reprogramming
2/12/2015 Cindy Brya
A new technique being developed by MatSE assistant professor Kris Kilian could revolutionize medicine by enabling a patient’s own cells to be reverted back and modified to correct mutations and regenerate injured tissues. Kilian recently received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for this work and for his initiative in educating students about stem cell engineering.
Written by Cindy Brya
A new technique being developed by Kris Kilian could revolutionize medicine by enabling a patient’s own cells to be reverted back and modified to correct mutations and regenerate injured tissues. Kilian recently received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for this work and for his initiative in educating students about stem cell engineering.
In cell biology, pluripotency refers to a stem cell that has the potential to differentiate into any of the three germ layers: endoderm, mesoderm, or ectoderm. Human cells have been shown to revert to a primitive "embryonic-like" pluripotent state when only four genes are forced "on" using genetic techniques. This discovery earned John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
"However, the process in which cells reprogram is not well-defined or understood, is very inefficient, and takes considerable time," explained Kilian, who joined the Illinois faculty in 2011 as an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Kilian is using designer cell culture materials to study how cells revert to pluripotency in order to develop a system that can quickly and efficiently reprogram a patient’s cells. "The combination of approaches employed is expected to dramatically reduce reprogramming time, increase efficiency, and reduce the need for exogenous factors such as lentivirus," added Kilian.
The emerging view of how materials influence cellular reprogramming that is supported by Kilian’s research will be integrated into education and outreach activities through a new Stem Cell Engineering Training Institute (SCETI). In this institute, laboratory videos will be developed for use in a summer camp for high school girls--Girls Adventures in Mathematics Engineering and Science (GAMES)--and to supplement the curriculum of the senior undergraduate course in biomaterials.
Kilian worked at Rosetta Inpharmatics/Merck & Co. in the Methods Development group from 2000 to 2004 before travelling to Sydney, Australia to do his PhD at the University of New South Wales. His doctoral and postdoctoral research involved the development of materials for biotechnology and medicine.
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