Research focus: Bioengineering mammalian cell protein expression and stem cell-based bioprocessor systems
Professor Peter Gray is the Director and a Group Leader in the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and nanotechnology (AIBN) at the University of Queensland. He has extensive experience in bioprocess development for mammalian cell cultures, and is applying this experience to the development of conditions and strategies which will allow the scaleable expansion of pluripotent stem cells under fully defined conditions.
Gray’s group will bring their experience of producing a wide range
of recombinant growth factors and ECM molecules and fragments to the
SRI, and their ability to evaluate the growth of hESC under defined
conditions, using pluripotency reporter cells lines as necessary. The
ECM fragments produced will be linked to a number of novel nanoparticles
to develop cell growth conditions which will allow hESC to be produced
under totally defined conditions in fully controlled stirred
minibioreactor systems.
As part of the Stem Cells Australia initiative, Professor Gray’s group
will explore the ability to use such systems to produce scaleable
numbers of ‘spin EB’ type hES cell particles will be investigated, as
will be the controlled differentiation of such cell down specific
lineage pathways.