Kara McCloskey

Tissue engineering is a sub/cross discipline that focuses on the design, development and maintenance of tissue products that are used for repairing, improving or restoring tissue function. This field is still in its infancy, and many problems and challenges exist that have yet to be overcome before safe, high-quality engineered tissue products are available in the marketplace. Therefore, my research focuses on:

• Deriving and characterizing pure populations from stem cells in vitro
• Comparing the function of such cells with mature cells derived in vivo
• Using these cells towards regenerative medicine applications
• Tissue engineering and cell therapy approaches
• Cardiovascular cell lineage, but plan to expand into other cell systems long-term

The McCloskey laboratory also has some novel bioreactors for the proposed project including an electrical stimulation device (C-Pace Cell Culture EP Stimulator, Harvard Apparatus), cell stretcher (CytoStim, CS Laboratory Technologies), and we are currently building our own tissue stretching device in the laboratory. The McCloskey laboratory is equipped with 3 laminar flow culture hoods, an inverted and stereomicroscope with digital camera and imaging software for embryonic stem cell culture and micromanipulations. A cone-and-plate shear stress device has been built and assembled in-house. Additionally, the lab has an inverted fluorescence microscope with three different filters, 6 stacked incubators, 3 general refrigerators, cryopreservation tanks, balances, water baths, sputter coater, electrical stimulation device (C-Pace Cell Culture EP Stimulator, Harvard Apparatus), cell stretcher (CytoStim, CS Laboratory Technologies), and a refrigerated centrifuge. We are currently building our own tissue stretching device in the laboratory. Also, we have access to two fluorescent activated cell sorters (FACS), one 11 color flow cytometer analyzer, as well as equipment for RT-PCR.