Milica Radisic

Milica Radisic is a Serbian Canadian tissue engineer, academic and researcher. She is a Professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry. She co-founded TARA Biosystems[1] and is a senior scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute.[2]

Milica Radisic
Born1976
Serbia
NationalitySerbian Canadian
OccupationTissue engineer, academic and researcher
TitleCanada Research Chair in Functional Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering
AwardsQueen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal
Fellow, Royal Society of Canada
Fellow, Academy of Sciences
Fellow, Canadian Academy of Engineering
Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
Academic background
EducationB.Eng., chemical engineering
Ph.D., chemical engineering
Alma materMcMaster University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ThesisBiomimetic Approach to Cardiac Tissue Engineering
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Toronto

Radisic is known for creating beating heart tissue in a dish using human-induced pluripotent stem cells. Her research has led the replication of diseased human heart tissue that can be used for drug screening to help create treatment therapies for patients with heart injury.[3]

Radisic was recognized as a YWCA Toronto Woman of Distinction in 2018,[4] and received the Women in Science and Engineering Breaking the Glass Ceiling Award.[5] She is a Former Chair of the Membership Committee for the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society. Radisic is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada,[6] Academy of Sciences, Canadian Academy of Engineering,[7] American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering[8] as well as Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Society.[9]

Education

Radisic attended the University of Novi Sad for her freshman year and transferred to McMaster University in 1996. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1999 and earned her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 2005.[10]

Career

Radisic started her career as a Research Assistant at McMaster University and MIT before working as a Post-doctoral Associate at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology. In 2005, Radisic joined Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry.[10] She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010 and to Professor, in 2014.[2]

Research

Radisic's general research focuses on treatments for myocardial infarction and drug cardio-toxicity screening. Her work centers on using human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells to develop a heart patch that could be used to study the safety and efficacy of new drugs as well as its compatibility with various cell lines. Radisic was the first author of a highly cited paper in PNAS where she successfully generated beating heart tissues from embryonic stem cells via electrical stimulation.[11]

Tissue engineering of cardiac patches

Radisic has worked on designing advanced bioreactors for cardiac tissue engineering capable of integrating mechanical and electrical stimuli with perfusion.[12] She has also conducted research on developing strategies to engineer vascularized myocardium based on the tri-culture of key heart cell types[13] using the engineered cardiac tissue as a model system for cardiac cell therapy or drug testing.[14]

Organ-on-a-chip engineering

Radisic's lab works on the development of injectable hydrogels with specific peptides such as QHREDGS peptide–modified hydrogel.[15] She also researched on the biometric cues in vitro and developed an engineered oriented cardiac tissue.[16] Radisic has also worked on other biomaterials such as moldable elastomeric polyester-carbon nanotube scaffolds for cardiac tissue engineering that will promote survival and localization of the cardio-myocytes injected into the infarcted myocardium.[17]

Radisic developed a flexible shape-memory scaffold for minimally invasive delivery of functional tissues. The scaffold utilizes a biodegradable polymer and a micro-fabricated lattice design to allow its shape memory property.[18] Her lab designed micro-fabricated cell culture systems with built-in electrodes and defined groove and ridge heights for simultaneous application of field stimulation and contact guidance cues, in order to understand interactive effects of multiple physical stimuli.

Radisic and her team developed a microfabricated system for generating 3D, aligned beating cardiac tissue (Bio-wire) from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) derived cardiomyocytes. The system utilized electrical stimulation to increase the maturation of hPSC derived cardiomyocytes. Bio-wire is the first system combining electrical stimulation with geometry control of 3D tissue assembly to improve the electrical and ultra-structural properties of human cardiac tissue.[19]

Awards/Honors
  • 1999 - Merit Award, Canadian Society of Chemical Industries
  • 2009 - Breaking the Glass Ceiling Award, Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), University of Toronto.
  • 2010 - McMaster University Arch Award for work in Bioengineering, McMaster University
  • 2011 - Connaught Innovation Award, University of Toronto
  • 2012 - Young Engineer Achievement Award, Engineers Canada
  • 2012 - McLean Award, University of Toronto
  • 2013 - Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal[20]
  • 2013 - Inventor of the Year Award, University of Toronto
  • 2014 - E.W.R Steacie Memorial Fellowship, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council[21]
  • 2015 - Hatch Innovation Award, Canadian Society of Chemical Engineers[22]
  • 2017 - Dr. E. R. Smith Lectureship in Cardiovascular Research Award, Libin Cardiovascular Institute, University of Calgary
  • 2018 - Frost & Sullivan's Technology Innovation Award
  • 2018 - YWCA Toronto Women of Distinction Award, Honouring Women in Canada[4]

Bibliography

Book

• Cardiac Tissue Engineering Methods and Protocols (2014) ISBN 978-1493910465

Selected articles
  • Radisic, M., Park, H., Shing, H., Consi, T., Schoen, F.J., Langer, R., Freed, L.E. and Vunjak-Novakovic, G., 2004. Functional assembly of engineered myocardium by electrical stimulation of cardiac myocytes cultured on scaffolds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(52), pp. 18129–18134.
  • Radisic, M., Park, H., Chen, F., Salazar-Lazzaro, J.E., Wang, Y., Dennis, R., Langer, R., Freed, L.E. and Vunjak-Novakovic, G., 2006. Biomimetic approach to cardiac tissue engineering: oxygen carriers and channeled scaffolds. Tissue Engineering, 12(8), pp. 2077–2091.
  • Shen, Y.H., Shoichet, M.S. and Radisic, M., 2008. Vascular endothelial growth factor immobilized in collagen scaffold promotes penetration and proliferation of endothelial cells. Acta Biomaterialia, 4(3), pp. 477–489.
  • Miyagi, Y., Chiu, L.L., Cimini, M., Weisel, R.D., Radisic, M. and Li, R.K., 2011. Biodegradable collagen patch with covalently immobilized VEGF for myocardial repair. Biomaterials, 32(5), pp. 1280–1290.
  • Thavandiran, N., Dubois, N., Mikryukov, A., Massé, S., Beca, B., Simmons, C.A., Deshpande, V.S., McGarry, J.P., Chen, C.S., Nanthakumar, K. and Keller, G.M., 2013. Design and formulation of functional pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac microtissues. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(49), pp.E4698-E4707.
  • Biowire: a platform for maturation of human pluripotent stem cell–derived cardiomyocytes SS Nunes, JW Miklas, J Liu, R Aschar-Sobbi, Y Xiao, B Zhang, J Jiang, ... Nature Methods 10 (8), 781-787
  • A platform for generation of chamber-specific cardiac tissues and disease modeling Y Zhao, N Rafatian, NT Feric, BJ Cox, R Aschar-Sobbi, EY Wang, ... Cell 176 (4), 913–927. e18
  • Flexible shape-memory scaffold for minimally invasive delivery of functional tissues M Montgomery, S Ahadian, LD Huyer, ML Rito, RA Civitarese, ... Nature Materials 16 (10), 1038-1046
  • Biodegradable scaffold with built-in vasculature for organ-on-a-chip engineering and direct surgical anastomosis B Zhang, M Montgomery, MD Chamberlain, S Ogawa, A Korolj, A Pahnke, ... Nature Materials 15 (6), 669-678

References
  1. "TARA Biosystems".
  2. "Milica Radisic".
  3. "Professor who created beating heart tissue wins NSERC Steacie Fellowship".
  4. "Dr. Radisic, a recent recipient of YWCA Toronto's 2018 Women of Distinction Award, shares her thoughts on women's role in STEM fields as well as the challenges and future opportunities".
  5. "Professor Milica Radisic Receives WISE 'Breaking the Glass Ceiling' Award".
  6. "Milica Radisic named Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada".
  7. "Milica Radisic inducted into Canadian Academy of Engineering".
  8. "Milica Radisic To be Inducted into Medical and Biological Engineering Elite" (PDF).
  9. "International Fellows of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine".
  10. "A Universe Waiting to be Discovered".
  11. "Functional assembly of engineered myocardium by electrical stimulation of cardiac myocytes cultured on scaffolds".
  12. "Bioreactor for modulation of cardiac microtissue phenotype by combined static stretch and electrical stimulation".
  13. "Vascular endothelial growth factor secretion by nonmyocytes modulates Connexin-43 levels in cardiac organoids".
  14. "Human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte based models for cardiotoxicity and drug discovery".
  15. "Hydrogels With Integrin-Binding Angiopoietin-1–Derived Peptide, QHREDGS, for Treatment of Acute Myocardial Infarction".
  16. "Engineering of Oriented Myocardium on Three-Dimensional Micropatterned Collagen-Chitosan Hydrogel".
  17. "Moldable elastomeric polyester-carbon nanotube scaffolds for cardiac tissue engineering".
  18. "Flexible shape-memory scaffold for minimally invasive delivery of functional tissues".
  19. "Biowire: a platform for maturation of human pluripotent stem cell–derived cardiomyocytes".
  20. "Engineering Professors Recognized with Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Medal".
  21. "Professor Milica Radisic receives the Steacie Prize".
  22. "Past Winners - Hatch Innovation Award".
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