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CLUSTER 8: TISSUE ENGINEERING AND REGENERATIVE MEDICINE Bright and early Monday morning Cluster 8 was enjoying breakfast on the patio outside Café

V. The breeze was cool, the sun was out and they were ready to have a GR8 first day. Our day began with two safety meetings, one general and one specifically for bioengineering, as safety is the top priority. Then it was off to meet Dr. Sah and Dr. Gaetani, our esteemed professors. Dr. Gaetani gave us an introduction to Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, specifically how tissue engineering began, how it has developed by the practice of combining scaffolds, cells, and biological molecules to form functional tissues, and how these tissues have helped with wound healing and even the formation of functional organs such as a bladder. Dr. Sah gave us time to get to know each other better and we are a talented group! He then spoke to us about the history, techniques and details of cell culture so that we will be well informed when we learn to grow our cultures in the lab. Erica, one of our Teaching Assistance, taught us how to use pipettes and we had some lab time in the afternoon to try out our newly acquired skill. While some of us were working in the lab, Rebecca, our second Teaching Assistant, taught us sterile technique and Neha, our third Teaching Assistant (yes, we have three incredible TA’s), taught us how to make serial dilutions. As the sun set on our first day of COSMOS we headed back to the dorms eager to learn about COSMOlympics.

By the end of the first week in the lab we can now properly pipette using serological pipettes and micro pipettes, make and pH a solution, do serial and simple dilutions, and use sterile tech-nique to make media. We have looked at graphing as a means of presenting data, how to ana-lyze our data using Excel, and then how to use statistics such as standard deviation, to evaluate our data. We have continued to expand our knowledge about Tissue Engineering from Dr. Sah regarding the variable characteristics of tissues and organs and how these differences create challenges in tissue engineering. Dr. Gaetani has taught us more about characterization of tis-sue and elaborated on various methods and purposes of microscopy in the laboratory. At this point we have successfully mastered half of our twelve laboratory skills that will help prepare us for our own projects, understand the purpose of a variety of laboratory techniques, and defi-nitely have a clearer understanding of Tissue Engineering.

During scientific communications the discussions have been focusing on how to effectively communicate and we were taught how to properly set up and use a scientific notebook. We are beginning our Ethics projects and with help from our library presentation and Dr. Sahs’ Litera-ture Review we have the tools we need to perform background research. All of COSMOS had the privilege of hearing Dr. Kante, assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCSD, discuss his research using electromagnetic waves. Our cluster hopes that someday he will even develop a non-magnetic metamaterial invisibility cloak for personal use.

Finally, to complete the week we took our first field trip to the Sanford Consortium where we toured a wide variety of labs and learned about the robust collaborative research. On Friday night we will compete in COSMOS Olympics. Stay tuned for more about both of these in next weeks’ newsletter. Overall we have had an amazing start because of meticulous lab work, collaborative thinking and the brilliant young minds in the GR8 Cluster 8!

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CLUSTER 8: TISSUE ENGINEERING AND REGENERATIVE MEDICINE The first week ended with a marvelous

tour of Sanford Consortium, COSMOlymipics, and an introduction to our projects. At Sanford Consorti-um Dr. Gaetani gave us an overview of the facility whose goal is to “advance stem cell research through collaborative, multi-disciplinary interac-tions… applying the powers of stem cells to promote diagnoses, treatments, and cures for degenerative diseases and injuries” (http://www.sanfordconsortium.org/). Then we were able to tour various labs, listen to informative mini lectures from leading faculty, attend a poster session with post-doctoral fellows, and even watch a flow cytom-etry run! After the tour we walked to the Glider Port and enjoyed our ocean view as we ate lunch. The next day, Dr. Sah and Dr. Gaetani introduced us to a variety of projects so we could ponder the choices over the weekend. And then to wrap up the week, we had COSMOS Olympics. Our skit, which won first place, skills in a variety of events, and of course brain power was GR8!

We began our second week with a tour of Advanced Biomatrix which is involved in the produc-tion of three dimensional (3D) applications for tissue culture, cell assay, and cell proliferation. They gave us an overview of their company and answered all of our questions from how the business began, to what was involved in manufacturing and production, and the purposes of their various products. We were given a company tour and then they gave us a very generous gift of collagen which we will be able to use for our projects!

In the lab we have finished learning our twelve lab skills. We can now use a microscope to view stained and unstained cells and use a hemocy-tometer to count cells. Additionally we can thaw, grow and passage our cells, create collagen gels, decellularize tissue, and examine histology slides to evaluate our tissues. Our TA’s, Erica, Rebecca and Neha, have taken the lead instructing us in pre and post lab and guiding us through each lab. They have been GR8 teachers as we navigate through a wide

range of skills.

Our lectures and discussions by our dis-tinguished faculty, Dr. Sah and Dr. Gaetani have expanded our knowledge about stem cells, bio-materials and biomechanics in tissue engineering. As we increase our comprehension about tissue engineering we have many more questions and Dr. Sah and Dr. Gaetani are always eager to help us. This week was exciting as we spent time summariz-ing our lectures, and discussing and researching our groups’ project ideas with our professors so that next week we can begin our much anticipated pro-jects.

In the communications portion of the cluster we have had the opportunity to attend a Discovery Lecture from Dean McGinnis. His re-search involves the regulation of transcription fac-tors in embryonic Hox genes which determine the morphological features in animals. The thought of being able to regulate body structure fascinated us as we pondered if we could create wings on a hu-man, or ethically, should we! Each of us has done background research on our personally selected ethics topic, written a rough draft of our paper, and we all submitted our final drafts on Thursday. Final-ly, we have been discussing what makes a presen-tation effective and using this knowledge to present our ethical issues in Tissue Engineering within our cluster. What a GR8 week we had!

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CLUSTER 8: TISSUE ENGINEERING AND REGENERATIVE MEDICINE Week two ended with super summary lecture from Dr. Gaetani. He helped us review all of the material from our lectures and discussions and answered our extensive array of questions. Dr. Sah introduced us to proper experimental design so we were fully equipped to delve into project planning on Friday afternoon. Each project group of three students was able to develop a title, summarize background information, propose a study design, and plan appropriate statistical analysis. Week three began as we completed our planning phase of our work. After two days of researching, planning, brainstorming, and support from our revered professors Dr. Sah and Dr. Gaetani and our cherished TA’s, Erica, Rebecca and Neha, everyone was prepared to begin the much anticipated projects. Briefly the groups will be examining the effect of car-tilage matrix on compaction and remodeling of collagen, cartilage tissue engineering by compaction, the relationship of hyaluronic acid (HA) and cartilage particles on chondrocyte growth and extracellular matrix (ECM) retention, cardiac ECM hydrogel stiffness as it re-lates to cardiac progenitor cell viability, cardiac stem cell viability in MeHA-UV cross-linked gels, and cardiac stem cell growth in spheroids with a variety of ECM’s. In the lab, tissues are being processed, gels formed, cells cultured, and materials are being prepared and tested. After an intense week in the lab our projects are underway and we eagerly await the results in a few days.

Dr. Paul Jensen, from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, was our speaker for our Discovery Lecture this week. His research goal is to find microbes which produce natu-ral products that can be used as new medicine, a topic that our cluster found intriguing! In Cluster Explorations, it was all about cluster pride, as Dr. Sah presented to all of COSMOS. He spoke about what we have been doing and a brief glimpse into the GR8 projects under-way. Out of the lab and in science communications, we are working on creating posters, power points, and papers to document our projects and prepare for our upcoming presen-tations. Cluster 8 continues to be ‘GR8’ as we have acquired the knowledge and developed the discipline to plan and execute our projects.

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CLUSTER 8: TISSUE ENGINEERING AND REGENERATIVE MEDICINE At the end of last week we took a well-deserved break and visited Do Ho Suh's Fallen Star which is part of UCSD's Stuart Collec-tion. It is a house perched at an angle off the edge of the main Jacobs School of Engineering building. It shows Suh's perception of society and our surroundings. Inside the house we all appeared out of proportion and outside we delighted in spending time to enjoy the garden.

Week 4 began and ended with an enormous amount of excit-ing and challenging work. It was overwhelming to us just how much planning and preparing was necessary to complete our projects and how much thinking was required to problem solve and analyze our data. As the week progressed all of the data was collected as our projects were completed, posters were created, power points put together, and our research paper ultimately finalized.

Each group worked with a professor and TA in order to complete their projects. With the expert guidance of Dr. Sah and Erica; Arjun, Pio and Nandini studied the effects of cartilage matrix on the compaction of colla-gen hydrogels and Austin, Aly and Michael investigated the effects of compaction on the properties of cell-seeded collagen hydrogels. Dr. Sah also worked with Rebecca to guide Matthews’, Bhavanas’ and Jessicas’ research into the effects of hyluronan and cartilage particles in cartilage tissue engineering. Under the skilled leadership of Dr. Gaetani and Re-becca; Brando, Danielle and Winifred studied hydrogel compaction as a mechanism to mimic mechanical properties of cardiac tissue. Dr. Gaetani also worked with Neha to lead; Emilys’, Sanjeets’ and Alinas’ research into the effects of varying Me-HA gel stiffness on cardiac pro-genitor cell phenotype and Ikrans’, Joys’ and Dylans’ investigation into the effect of cardiac extracellular matrix hydrogel on cardiac spheroid formation and phenotype.

In our last Discovery Lecture, Dr. Andrea Tao spoke about nanoparticle assembly from the basics to applications in nature. Our cluster thought that her presentation was, “highly informative, interesting and relatable…definitely the best speaker this summer”.

The end of this week will bring COSMOS to a close. The stu-dents have become proficient in their lab skills, refined their technical writing, and developed and implemented their leading edge projects. They presented their work within cluster on Thursday, to Cluster 7 on Friday, and are eagerly anticipating their final poster presentations to their families and friends on Saturday. A titanic thank you to our brilliant leaders, Dr.Sah and Dr. Gaetani, and our extraordinary Teaching Assis-tant’s Erica Cacasan, Rebecca Drake, and Neha Srikumar for all of their

leadership and guidance this summer. Cluster 8 has had a Gr8 sum-mer at COSMOS!

What I will always remember about COSMOS 2016 is…

the people I met. Arjun Singh

friends. It is really fun to do something you like and then having your friends with you. It is amazing to see everyone working to-wards a common goal. It is really fulfilling. Pio Blanco

one of the best experiences I have ever had, both academically and environmentally, and I will never forget all of the people. Nan-dini Rajgopal

the skit about Sanjeet and Brando. I like how close we are as a

cluster and being in the lab and failing and coming back up togeth-er. A shout out to my roommates Brian and Nick. Austin Hwang

struggling with the ethics essay and how much fun COSMOlym-pics was. Aly Ung

Ethanol. Matthew Wang

the new knowledge I learned in the lab and that I can always get help from my mentors, Dr. Sah, Erica, Rebecca, Neha and Mrs. Fowler. A shout out to my roommate Araceli. Bhavana Kunisetty

the people here and just having everyone be interested in the same thing as you. Jessica Yang

Patty Fowler in all her glory! Michael DaRodda

our bonfire night when the entire cluster went to the beach and we all enjoyed the sunset. Brando Sipin

was when we immediately bonded in front of the bear and we made our own sign for our cluster! Danielle Rodriguez

just hanging out with my cluster during every programing event and our GR8 skit. Winifred Chung

how our cluster gets so genuinely excited about the nerdiest things, like free collagen. Emily Pham

the relationships I made with everyone around me. It was nice to

meet such a diverse group of individuals who had the same intent and goal when it came to COSMOS. Sanjeet Paluru

all the friendships I have made here that I am hoping will last for a long time. Alina Luk

when I first made my COSMOS babies (cells). Ikran Ibrahim

the first live assay when I saw those big green jiggily spheroids and they were so cute! Joy Jung

all of the lab experiences and all the people I met, and Ms. Patty telling me not to touch my face with gloves on. Dylan Tan