A coating technology that protects and shields stem cells in culture from rough handling and in the body from attack by the immune system. In situ, the coating enhances survival, and increases stability and lengthens the time the cells can remain active when injected into the body. The coating itself can also modulate the immune system cells that come into contact. In other words, it gives them a higher staying power. In culture, it provides a biomimetic environment that stabilizes them and helps prevent them from senescing or changing phenotype. MSCs are known to excrete products that modify the immune system positively for healing and repair. Moreover, MSCs also secrete chemicals that.

The thin coating enables the stem cells to bear and access the advantages of biomaterials- mechanical protection, protection from other cells, buffering against other influencing biochemical- while being easy to inject compared to implanting larger bulk hydrogels with the stem cells embedded inside. Our technology uses less biomaterial for the coating than a comparable MSC microgel developed by Mooney etc. al. at the Wyss Institute, Harvard. Thus, it is a more efficient use of biomaterial and is less restrictive on the cell. It also reduces the effect of diffusion limitation, allowing the swifter passage of a broad spectrum of biomolecule uses to pass across the coating. This is important because too much biomaterial can potentially lead to problems. Although the material used is virtually non-allogeneic. The coating also tethers to the membrane, which has other definite advantages. The main advantage is that the coating adds to a cell with a given phenotype. We are also modifying the primary coating so that it tells the cell to behave in different ways. It is opening up more possibilities for the control and guidance of the cells while it has its intact coating versus uncoated stem cells.

 

Use in cell therapy to protect against the anti-self-part of the immune system while simultaneously modulating the immune system involved in healing and repair. Potential use is to hinder host versus graft rejection reactions and smooth organ transplantation by reducing immune responses to it. Also, it provides a vehicle for cell transplantation and a starting point for accelerated regeneration of tissues. The coating decorated with adhesion recognition molecules enables homing to specific tissues and cells for more targeted therapy. In the lab setting, it functions as a factory for stem cell expansion, stem cell differentiation, too, by giving 3D spatial environment and biochemical spatial and temporal patterning as well as more realistic biological architecture.

A lot of the groundwork for identifying new functions and applications for technology translation that is not been done before in a systematic way is to use natural history information- which is represented by a variety and abundance of observations. There is a mass of existing information residing in museum collections and literature. Such collections represent an extensive snapshot of the nature of organisms in the past (200 years) to some extent. The groups and present, but this only totals an estimated 5% of the total biodiversity of organisms.

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Moreover, there is much more information potentially available through further study of nature and natural phenomena. Furthermore, new technologies created recently can enhance and expand the quality, accuracy, and quantity of observations in nature for the advancing knowledge and understanding of natural phenomena. Accordingly, extending and growing information about the natural history of functions is critical to sparking new ideas for technological research and development.