Ear, Knee, Throat: How One Cartilage Leads to Another

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

4:00 PM-5:30 PM

BIOMED Seminar

Title:
Ear, Knee, Throat: How One Cartilage Leads to Another

Speaker:
Riccardo L. Gottardi, PhD
Assistant Professor
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)
Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Pediatric Research Center
Perelman School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania

Details:
The first organ grown in a lab and implanted in a person was a trachea. When this happened, it generate an immense excitement in the scientific community and the general public as the promise of tissue engineering appeared to become a reality. Unfortunately, the science was not rigorous, resulting in the loss of patients’ lives and in a major setback for the field. We took it upon ourselves to re-think the tissue engineering of laryngotracheal reconstruction. In this endeavor we have developed rigorous in vitro and in vivo strategies to support a translational tissue engineering approach that we will be discussing in this presentation. At the same time, we have been challenging existing paradigms in cartilage engineering.

We have selected and characterized a recently identified population of progenitors resident in cartilage, a tissue once thought to be only populated by chondrocytes. We have further harnessed those unique progenitors to drive cartilage repair, showing how, contrary to common belief, cartilage can actually repair under the right conditions. We will also discuss an exciting new biomaterial based on decellularized cartilage that we have uniquely been able to recellularize, overcoming the major challenge behind the failure of previous tracheal engineering.

Finally, we will discuss our newest approach to tympanic membrane repair developed in collaboration with the clinicians of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. We have applied the concepts of our successful cartilage scaffold to patch damaged tympanic membranes, a problem affecting a hundred thousand children every year, with a tremendous potential for translation.

Biosketch:
Riccardo Gottardi, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and of Bioengineering at University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gottardi leads the Bioengineering and Biomaterials Laboratory at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, working closely with clinicians to develop engineering solutions for pediatric airway disorders focusing on translational tissue engineering and on novel preventative drug delivery approaches focused on clinical applications.

Dr. Gottardi's lab investigates the basic cellular, molecular, and microbiological mechanisms as well as the genetic aspects of ear, nose, and throat damage and healing, and combines the development of organ-on-chip and animal models of cartilage, vocal folds, and craniofacial tissues to study growth, disease, and repair. His research interests include decellularized matrix approaches to tissue repair, airway and vocal fold regeneration, and the influence of the microbiome on airway disorders, as well as the development of biomaterials for skeletal tissue engineering.

Contact Information

Lisa Williams
ltw22@drexel.edu