In May of 2013 Pre-IGERT fellow Katrina Hansen attended the first International Advanced Course on Regenerative Medicine Manufacturing. The course was held on the Algarve in Tavira, Portugal and attracted students, faculty and other professionals from across the globe. There were roughly 30 trainees from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, and Portugal and another 20 presenters from academia and industry. The course was chaired by Todd McDevitt from Georgia Tech, Chris Hewitt from the University of Loughborough in the UK, and Joaquim Cabral from the Instituto Superior Technico in Lisbon, Portugal. The week consisted of classes given by several presenters, oral and poster presentations given by the trainees, a group project, and several social events. Topics from basic stem cell biology to large scale bioprocessing were covered.
The course focused on the challenges facing the field of regenerative medicine in terms of the scale up needed to bring cellular therapies to the clinic. Most cellular therapies will require billions of cells for only a handful of patients. Currently, the technology to culture that volume of cells does not exist. One of the techniques used to get the trainees to think about these issues was to create a group project where the trainees had to pitch an idea to a company about a regenerative medicine therapy. As part of the project the trainees had to think about cell source, scale up, and the business side of the technology. At the end of the week they presented their work in front of everyone.
Katrina enjoyed the full experience of learning from and connecting with leaders in the field and the opportunity to work with people of different backgrounds from around the world.