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Laboratories of Linda G. Griffith and Steven R. Tannenbaum
Office Addresses: 16-436 and 56-731
The broader goal of my research has always been to benefit the drug development process in the pharmaceutical
industry, and facilitate the entry of newer drugs into the market. I currently work on developing an in-vitro
liver model that allows the growth of hepatic and non-parenchymal cells (sinusoidal and stellate) in an balanced manner by recreating an environment that closely mimics the in-vivo setting.
Currently existing liver models are limited by their ability to retain the functionality of the liver cells in culture over a long period. As a result early predictive studies of toxicity and metabolism using these systems are unreliable, accounting for a lot of drugs exhibiting toxicity during subsequent clinical trials. Maintaining a balance of the supporting non-parenchymal cells in lab cultures is also extremely challenging on account of limited survival of sinusoidal endothelial cells, as well as overproliferation of stellate cells in standard cultures. In an attempt to retain hepatocyte functionality while strictly regulating the balanced survial of non-parenchymal cells, I am exploring their effects of various parameters in my system, that I hypothesize control the cellular behaviour.
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