SEMINAR: In vivo strategies for tissue engineering, from a beating heart to a beating drum

The Seminar: The field of tissue engineering has seen significant advances in materials and cell biology research over the last twenty years, but most development has been through ‘in vitro’ technologies. Translation of these methods to the clinic will require ‘in vivo’ methods to be advanced and this talk will consider recent progress in two applications: engineering beating heart muscle from stem cells and tissue engineering for rapid repair of tympanic membrane perforations.

The Speaker: Rod Dilley is Head of Molecular and Cellular Otolaryngology at Ear Science Institute Australia and Adjunct Associate Professor in School of Surgery at UWA. In 1986 he completed his PhD in Department of Anatomy and Human Biology at UWA on vascular biology of vein graft arterialisation, with John McGeachie as supervisor. Rod did postdoctoral research training at University of Washington in Seattle USA then at Baker Institute in Melbourne, working on cardiovascular growth in hypertension, diabetes and atherosclerosis. Since then his research on cardiovascular disease has come to include tissue engineering and applications for adult stem cells. At Melbourne University since 2004 he was Head of the Cardiac Tissue Engineering group at O’Brien Institute and Principal Scientist for the biotechnology company Australian Tissue Engineering Centre. In 2011 he returned to Perth where his new position also takes in regeneration and tissue engineering in the ear.