Source: Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center of Sun Yat-sen University 

Edited by: Liu Nian 

Key words: tissue engineering; regenerative medicine 

From April 7 to 9, Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center (ZOC) and State Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology (SKLO), along with Nature Materials, Nature Reviews Materials and other institutions, jointly organized an international forefront conference on “Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine”. Twelve world’s top scholars specialized in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and supramolecular chemistry attended the conference as keynote speakers, including Professor Samuel Stupp from Northwestern University in America; Professor Kevin Healy from University of California, Berkeley in America; Professor Nadia from Monash University in Australia; Professor Stephen Badylak from University of Pittsburgh in America; Professor Xingdong Zhang from Sichuan University, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); Professor Qi Zhou, member of CAS, etc. The conference attracted more than 250 scientists and scholars from Harvard Medical School, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Tsinghua University and other well-known institutions home and abroad. Professor Yizhi Liu, Director of ZOC, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of the conference. He hoped that participants of this conference could learn cutting-edge knowledge and technology in the fields of scaffold materials and the healing of body tissues and organs, in order to promote the exploration in biological materials used for prevention and treatment of ophthalmic diseases. 

They had an in-depth discussion on the latest progresses and current challenges on tissue engineering and regenerative medicine during the conference, focusing on cellular microenvironment, the design, making and monitoring of scaffold materials and engineered tissue, and the healing of body tissues and organs. The discussions covered a variety of topics, including cell-material interactions, stem cell mechanobiology, extracellular matrix mimics, tissue models, bioelectronic interfaces, three-dimensional bioprinting, soft-tissue regeneration, orthopedic tissue engineering and tissue imaging. 

There was a “Q&A box” for collecting relevant questions. The participants could drop their questions in it and the keynote speakers randomly picked up the notes from the box and answered the questions at the “round-table” discussion. They had a lively discussion during this session. 

The conference also involved a session for presenting posters. “Top Ten Posters” have been chosen out of the 56 posters submitted by top universities and research institutions around the world. The winners are from University of Toronto, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (EMPA), City University of Hong Kong and other institutions.