Computational Modeling and Stem Cell Engineering

A key goal of regenerative medicine and bioengineering is the quantitative and robust control over the fate and behavior of individual cells and their populations, both in vitro and in vivo. Central to this endeavor are stem cells (SCs), which can be functionally defined as undifferentiated cells of a multicellular organism that balance the capacity for sustained self-renewal with the potential to differentiate into specialized cell types. The biology of multicellular organisms necessitates the existence and precise control of SCs to facilitate development from a single cell during embryogenesis, and tissue homeostasis in the face of continual loss of terminally differentiated cells. It is therefore not surprising that SCs have been identified and isolated from numerous adult human tissues, as well as more recently, the inner cell mass of the preimplantation human blastocyst. SCs promise a renewable source of human tissue for research, pharmaceutical testing, and cell-based therapies. Fulfilling this promise will require not only the precise control of SC self-renewal and differentiation, but also imposing this control on the formation of more functionally complex tissue-like structures.