AIBN Seminar Series Understanding How Aggressive Adult Brain Cancer Talks

We are pleased to present Associate Professor Charles Unsworth to present on the topic: Understanding How Aggressive Adult Brain Cancer Talks 

When: Friday 29th September 2023

Where:AIBN Level 1 Seminar rom or online via zoom. Click here to join

Time: 11am

Abstract:

My research group is focussed on understanding the basic science of network communication in the brain. The distinct advantage of my group’s research is that we investigate network communication by combining the fields of ‘Cell Patterning’, ‘Multi-Electrode-Arrays’(MEAs) and Photonics to arrange, control and stimulate/record from brain cells on a silicon chip. This has enabled my group to create a transformative silicon chip technology allowing for the precise construction of large-scale regular grid networks of human neurons or astrocytes on chip. Furthermore, our platform allows cells to be individually electrically and photonically addressable at the single-cell level, such that both electrical and calcium (Ca²⁺) communication can be mapped accurately from the single-cell level to large network scales. In this talk, I will highlight our recent work in the cell patterning of aggressive Glioblastoma (GBM) brain cancers and how we have successfully laser stimulated them in patterned networks, for the first time, to better understand the basic science of their communication in order to identify channels and pathways that can slow down rapid cell division, invasion and infiltration of such aggressive brain cancers. 

Bio:

Associate Professor Charles Unsworth received his PhD in 1997 from the University of St Andrews in Physics before conducting postdoctoral research at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Hospital for Sick Children. He joined the Department of Engineering Science & Biomedical Engineering at the University of Auckland in 2002 and has recently established the Centre of Neural Engineering & Cell Technologies (CoNECT) there of 50+ members. He was the recipient of a prestigious Royal Society of New Zealand Senior James Cook Fellowship and is an appointed Adjunct Professor of Neural Chip Technology at Tampere University in Finland. He is a Principal Investigator at the MacDiarmid Institute of Advanced Materials & Nanotechnology, National Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) and has been involved in and received > $20M competitive research funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the Health Research Council and Royal Society of New Zealand and $48 CoRE funding from the Tertiary Education Commission NZ.