Tokyo Women's Medical University

Graduate School of Medical Science

Life Sciences for Co-creating the Future

About us

This division focuses on interdisciplinary research fields including biomaterials, regenerative medicine, and space life science. We cover the design of biomaterials and methodologies of production for substitutable organs. Replacement of organs such as organ transplants, artificial hearts, and dialysis has been applied in clinical settings for patients who are suffering from decreased or damaged functions of organs. Recently, regenerative medicine including the creation of tissue and organ using cells has become advanced, leading to the transplantation of cell-based regenerated organs in the future. The development of these substitutable organs is based on various biomedical engineering technologies. The division of organ replacement pursues the development of new types of substitutable organs utilizing cutting-edge bioengineering technologies. Biomaterials research also contributes development of new food technologies associated with SDGs. Researches for regenerative medicine such as mass cell production will be applied for development of new food technologies including cell-cultured meat production. Moreover, these technologies have potentials to be diverted to life science researches in space in near future.

Research

(1) Fabrication of 3D tissues/organs based on cell sheet technology
(2) Collaborative creation of new innovative technologies based on tissue engineering
(3) Technical development to engineer skeletal muscle tissue for preclinical study and cultured meat production
(4) Construction of transplantable hepatic sheet tissues
(5) Development and application of smart bio-interfaces to support cell sheet engineering
(6) Development of smart surfaces by polymer coating technology for functional cell sheet fabrication
(7) Development of human cancer tissue models

Faculty

Tatsuya SHIMIZU
Masamichi NAKAYAMA
Yoshikatsu AKIYAMA
Jun KOBAYASHI
Hironobu TAKAHASHI
Tetsutaro KIKUCHI
Azumi YOSHIDA
Tsukasa HARA

---