E Jabbari - Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia SC, USA

Tissue morphogenesis during fetal development is highly de-pendent on spatial and temporal expression of multiple morph-ogens targeting different progenitor cells. During fetal develop-ment, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and endothelial colony forming cells (ECFCs) are implicated in bone formation cou-pled by paracrine signaling between the two progenitor cells. The invading ECFCs secrete osteogenic morphogens (BMP۲) to stimulate cell differentiation and mineralization whereas the differentiating MSCs release vasculogenic morphogens (VEGF) to further stimulate capillary formation for the meta-bolically-active osteoblasts. I will present in my seminar novel nanomaterial-based strategies and tissue models for testing on-demand delivery of morphogens to progenitor cells in skeletal tissue regeneration