Neurology Grand Rounds

Kinne Auditorium

Monday March 27, 2017 at 12:15 PM

Video-conferenced to Nemours 1 North and Brooks Rehab

Professor James Hickman, Ph.D., presents:

“Human-on-chip systems for neurological disease investigation” 

James J. Hickman, Professor of NanoScience Technology, Chemistry, Biomolecular Sciences and Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida, received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, in 1990. He has been working in the area of functional, in vitro systems for close to 25 years and has been one of the pioneers in establishing self-assembled monolayers as a tool for creating compatible biological/non-biological neuronal interfaces first in industry, then in government, and for the past 16 years in academia. A primary application for our research is the creation of new test-beds of functional cellular systems to investigate spinal cord repair, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer's. If we can create functional assays based on small cellular units, this would allow the creation of high throughput analysis systems to screen for drug candidates based on cell-cell communication before beginning animal and human studies. He has also been heavily involved in integrating biological and cell-based systems with MEMS devices, primarily microelectronic devices. He published the first serum-free, defined culture system for neuronal systems in 1995 (Schaffner et al. 1995) and has now extended this from rat to mouse, both embryonic and adult, as well as to human and chimeric systems of human and rat constructs. These defined in vitro systems can now be integrated with cardiac, muscle, endothelial, hepatocyte, cancer, kidney and epithelial cells as well as multiple combinations of different cell types, which has culminated by the recent publication of multi-organ toxicity in a 4-organ system (Oleaga et al., 2016). He worked at NSF (CISE) and DARPA (ITO) in the area of biological computation and received the NSF Director’s Award for Collaborative Integration for contributions to integrating biology and information technology research in 2002. He has 118 publications and 20 book chapters, in addition to 16 issued patents out of 36 total patent applications.

Learning objectives:

Define areas of new neuroscience knowledge and research

Identify Clinicopathologic (CPC) correlations of neurologic disease

Illuminate areas of practice-based improvement within the neurosciences based on advancing scientific research or Practice-based improvement projects.

Speaker Professor James Hickman, PhD has no financial relationship to disclose or intentions to discuss off label/investigational use of a commercial product/device.

Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Credit is available to Mayo Clinic Staff only.

This program is supported in part by an educational grant from the following company in accordance with ACCME Standards: None