Schedule

Tuesdays and Fridays, 4.00pm – 6.00pm (USP-SR1)

Structure

Lectures will be conducted in seminar style with discussions. Before each class, students need to complete pre-class reading (approximately 30 minutes of reading materials). Students need to complete a homework assignment that will require them to do the readings in order to submit before the class. The homework assignment will include answering questions related to the assigned readings and students will also need to provide one question of their own that may be used for class discussions. The pre-class reading assignments given in this module can include book chapters, articles from scientific magazines such as Scientific American and review articles. Answers to homework assignments will be reviewed in following class. There will be a final report at the end of the semester, students will work in teams of 2-3, but submit individual reports. Throughout the semester, there will be invited scientific speakers from local companies and governing bodies, students will have the opportunity to interact with these invited speakers.

Reading

The pre-class reading can include book chapters, articles from scientific magazines and simple review articles. The followings are some reading materials from which some assigned pages are selected:

• Translational Regenerative Medicine. Atala 2014.
• Regenerative Engineering and Developmental Biology: Principles and Applications. David M. Gardiner. 2017.
• Principles of Tissue Engineering. Lanza. 2013

Pre-requisites

There is no pre-requisite for this module. The first class serves as an introductory class to cover basic background concepts and terminology in biology essential for this module, from cell to organ level. Subsequent terms and concepts will be covered as per needed in subsequent classes.

Assessments

There is no examination for this module.

Syllabus

Week 1:
● Bootcamp: Introduction to basic concepts and terminology in biology from cells to organs
● Introduction to the regenerative medicine ecosystem and innate repair/regeneration

Week 2:
● Discussion on issues of the Innate repair and regeneration in Nature
● Inducing repair and regeneration by bioactive factors

Week 3:
● Biomaterials and scaffolds
● Stem cell biology

Week 4:
● Stem cell therapy: clinical implementations
● State-of-the-art technologies for stem cell manipulation

Week 5:
● Personalized medicine and ethical issues
● Invited scientific speaker from local stem cell company

Week 6:
● Invited speaker to introduce ethics
● Translational regenerative medicine example – stem cell therapies for liver regeneration.
No reading assignments.

Recess Week

Week 7:
● Bioethics debate
● Excursion to local company. Students have to submit reflection after excursion.

Week 8:
● Engineering implantable tissues (bottom-up approach)
● Engineering implantable tissues (top-down approach)

Week 9:
● Organ regeneration
● Bionic man

Week 10:
● Invited Speaker: commercialization challenges
● Invited Speaker: regulatory challenges

Week 11:
● Invited Speaker: Invited speaker to talk about socioeconomic impact
● Invited Speakers: Biotech companies in SG

Week 12:
● Summary: tackling problems and engineering solutions. No reading assignments.

Week 13:
● Final report due. For this report, students will work in teams of 2-3, but submit individual reports.