Biomedical Technologies

Advances in Biosensing and Bioimaging

Effective understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases is inherently linked to the technologies available to clinicians, veterinarians, agronomists, and researchers. The need for enhanced biochemical approaches to study and treat diseases, driven in part by the advent of precision therapy, has inspired new biosensing approaches to perform (i) high-throughput single-cell analysis, (ii) point-of-care detection of biomolecules, viruses, microbes, and cells, (iii) large-scale analysis and processing of massive data sets, and (iv) low-volume detection of disease biomarkers. Talks in this session will encompass a wide range of biosensing strategies that have been developed toward these efforts, including the use of nanoparticles, microfluidics, peptides, proteins, DNA, RNA, 3D printing, microscopy, and spectroscopy. Bioimaging is key to studying mechanisms underlying disease development, diagnosing or following the course of a disease, facilitating drug development via biodistribution and target validation, and improving image-guided therapy and surgery. Recent advances in biomedical imaging that will be covered in this session include the development of imaging devices, new molecular probes, kinetic modeling, multimodal and multiscale imaging, and imaging-based omics technologies.

Delivery & Targeting of Therapeutics

Novel technologies enabling tissue/cell specific delivery of payloads are necessary to unlock the potential of precision medicines and expand the therapeutic index of existing interventions. This session will focus on targeted delivery strategies currently being developed in both academia and industry for modalities including viral vectors, non-viral vectors (e.g., liposomes, lipid nanoparticles, polymeric nanoparticles), and extracellular vesicles. Other relevant topics for this session include overcoming drug delivery challenges by enhancing endo-lysosomal escape/intracellular delivery, extending circulation half-life, discovery and optimization of new targeting ligands, and strategies for controlling release kinetics of the cargos.

New Technologies in Microbiome, Cellular, and Tissue Engineering

This session will focus on new and emerging technologies used to engineer cell or tissue behavior, aimed at uncovering biomedical fundamentals or exploring applications such as engineered human cell therapies, regenerative medicine, engineered probiotics, and bacterial therapies. We also invite work that investigates a comprehensive understanding of diseases essential for identifying novel therapeutics and treatment approaches. New technological approaches focusing on cell cultures, in general, are invited. This session will focus on, but is not limited to, current developments in i) organ-on-a-chip, ii) biomaterials models (2D and 3D synthetic and natural materials), iii) organoids and iv) 3D printing across many tissue types that provide insight into disease pathology, as well as associated advances in analytics. Additionally, talks are welcome on a broad range of topics including, but not limited to, synthetic biology, biomaterial-based regenerative strategies, regulation of stem cell differentiation, receptor protein engineering, genetic circuit design, signal transduction, cell-cell communication, host-microbe interaction and evolution, and regulation of the microbiome to achieve biomedical goals.