Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Heart and blood diseases are leading causes of disability and death in Canada. Damage to blood vessels can reduce the function of vital organs leading to heart and lung failure. Stem cell therapies hold great promise for the repair and regeneration of these organs. Over the last two decades there has been substantial interest in the use of cell therapies for these serious diseases. However, a major limitation for most cell therapies is that the transplanted cells do not stay in the target organ where they are delivered. Transplanted cells are either lost or end up in other areas such as the spleen of bone marrow. This greatly limits the ability of stem cells to repair the damage and improve function. Since the stem cells do not stay where they are needed, any therapeutic benefit they may have is dependent on their ability to secrete proteins or other factors that can promote repair indirectly, rather than directly contributing to blood vessel repair by embedding into the damaged tissue. Micro-encapsulation, or "cocooning", of therapeutic cells within a supportive biomaterial provides a protective environment, similar to a natural stem cell niche, in which the cells can thrive. These cocoons will also increase the retention of the cells within a target organ, such as the lung, by enhancing cell survival and promoting their emergence from the cocoons, so that they can better repair and regenerate the damaged tissue. Thus, cell cocooning could be a major advance by potentially overcoming some of the greatest challenges in this field, namely poor transplanted cell survival and retention. By developing better methods and materials for the production of cocooned cells, this project will create new technologies that could greatly improve our ability to maximize the potential benefit of stem cell therapies and ultimately turn them into truly effective treatments for patients with life-threatening lung and heart diseases.