한빛사 인터뷰
- 등록2021-09-30
- 조회1,662
1. You recently published a paper, in the journal “Bioeng. Transl. Med., (2021) doi: 10.1002/btm2.10252”, titled “Transplantation of patient-specific bile duct bioengineered with chemically reprogrammed and microtopographically differentiated cells”
-Can you please briefly summarize this paper?
-Can you please tell us the main difficulties you had in the laboratory work and how you overcame them?
Cholangiopathies are hard to treat as a single entity. The method of treatment is liver transplantation which poses many restrictions. Our aim in this paper was to fix this problem by using both patient-specific cells and a patient specific artificial bile duct. Having said that, we wanted to be able to produce an exact replica of a patient’s bile duct using imaging and bioengineering techniques seeded with cholangiocytes. Those cholangiocytes were differentiated from human chemically derived progenitor cells (hCdH) reprogrammed from the same patient’s liver cells using a combination of small molecules and transplanted it in a rabbit model to show potential therapeutic usage. Using this bioengineering technique, the transplantation of the bile duct rather than a whole liver transplantation could help with problems such as shortage of organ availability as well as immune rejection.
I think the hardest part of it was finding the correct material for the artificial bile duct, how many cells to seeds, the right condition for growth and differentiation. Truthfully, it took us a lot of trial and error, a lot of thinking and a lot of brainstorming but eventually we were able to find the right condition.
2. Please introduce your laboratory, university or organization to bio-researchers in Korea.
Hanyang University in Seoul is a prestigious university that was founded in 1939. It goes back a long way. My laboratory is part of the HY Indang Center founded by Professor DongHo Choi, a hepatobiliary surgeon at Hanyang University Hospital. Currently we have 7 members in the team who are working hard everyday to find solution for liver diseases.
3. Please tell us your experiences and your thoughts related to research activities abroad.
There are a ton of amazing researchers and research being done abroad. I believe that all that research can be combined into one to come to a greater good and a sense of unity and community to overcome diseases that are majorly predominant in today’s world. With all the amazing efforts being done I have no doubt that science will prevail and little by little more solutions and cures will be found.
4. Can you provide some advice for younger scientists who have plans to study abroad?
Learn the language! Haha. There can be a lot of cultural differences in the way things are done from country to country but with a keen mind and a will to learn that can be easily overcome. In my time in Korea, I have learnt so many valuable lessons about how to work as part of a diverse team that I probably wouldn’t have learnt otherwise. Opening myself to the working culture and to daily life culture enabled me to become a better scientist. So, my biggest advice is to just take that leap and allow yourself to learn everything there is to learn no matter how hard it is.
5. Future plan?
We would love for this to go to clinical trials! I think that would be our next step. Currently, our researched focused mainly on a rabbit model however there is clear potential that this could also work on humans. We hope that with the appropriate further research, our goal will be met.
6. Do you have anything else that you would like to tell Korean scientists and students?
Any researcher or student has probably often felt tired and frustrated and maybe was ready to give up but please don’t! No matter how long it takes and how hard it may be there will always be a solution and an answer that is far greater than any of the struggle. Never give up! Fighting!
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