BME Seminar: Geoffrey Gurtner
Monday, March 21st, 2022, 12:00 p.m.
Geoffrey C. Gurtner, MD, FACS
Professor and Chair of Surgery
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
The University of Arizona
"Injury, Inflammation and Fibrosis"
Keating 103
Live Zoom | Passcode: BearDown
(Instructor permission required for enrolled students to attend via Zoom)
Hosts: Dr. Beth Hutchinson and Dr. Russ Witte
Persons with a disability may request a reasonable accommodation by contacting the Disability Resource Center at 621-3268 (V/TTY).
ABSTRACT:
In humans, tissue injury in most organ systems – including heart, tendons, brain and skin – results in fibrosis and scar formation. This fibrosis causes significant morbidity and mortality and is estimated to contribute to 45% of all deaths in the United States. Although the cells and molecular machinery involved in tissue repair are evolutionarily conserved, varying species exhibit distinct injury responses which correlate with organism size. While humans and other large organisms respond to injury by forming dysfunctional fibrotic scar tissue, smaller organisms respond to injury with tissue regeneration and restoration of function. Well-established allometric scaling principles dictate that these larger organisms experience exponentially higher tissue forces to facilitate movement and locomotion. How these evolutionary adaptations may affect tissue injury has not been thoroughly investigated in humans. In our work, we show that both pharmacologically or physically blocking the most evolutionary conserved biologic force sensor enables large organisms to heal after injury with true tissue regeneration by altering both inflammatory and fibrotic pathways. Future strategies to disrupt tissue force sensors may unlock the key to regenerating following injury in a wide range of organ systems.
BIO:
Dr. Geoffrey C. Gurtner is the chair of the Department of Surgery and professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona. A general and plastic surgeon, Dr. Gurtner was previously the Johnson and Johnson Professor of Surgery and Bioengineering (by courtesy) and Materials Science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. Dr. Gurtner is the author of over 300 peer-reviewed publications and is an Editor for two major textbooks in the field: Grabb & Smith’s Plastic Surgery and Plastic Surgery. Dr. Gurtner was awarded the James Barrett Brown Award in both 2009 and 2010 and has been named “researcher of the year” by the ASPS, AAPS and numerous other professional organizations. Dr. Gurtner runs an NIH and DoD funded laboratory examining how physical stimuli (mechanical and chemical) alter the human response to injury. This has led to the development of new technologies for which Dr. Gurtner has received 30 issued patents and over 100 patent applications. Dr. Gurtner has founded several venture-backed start-up companies, including Neodyne Biosciences and Arresto Biosciences, acquired by Gilead (NASDAQ:GILD) in 2011. Dr. Gurtner was also a founding partner at Tautona Group, an early-stage life science fund that has created novel biomedical technologies that have been sold to industry-leading companies, such as Allergan (NYSE:AGN), Novadaq (NASDAQ:NVDQ), and Acelity/KCI (San Antonio, TX).