School of Engineering

Deanna M. Thompson
Assistant Professor

Department Affiliation:

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Education:

Ph.D., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Chemical Engineering

M.S., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Chemical Engineering

B.S., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Chemical Engineering

Research Interests:

The research goals for my laboratory is to quantitatively and mechanistically examine the complex microenvironment of the injured nervous system. Despite injury, damaged neurons have demonstrated the capacity to re-grow if given the proper microenvironment, however research to date, has resulted in only limited comprehensive success. Most investigations focus on the individual release of growth factors, blocking of inhibitory cues, implantation of support cells or activation of intrinsic pathways to promote neuronal regeneration at the injury site. Recent in vivo studies have indicated the potential synergistic effect of combining several of the aforementioned strategies into a single therapeutic intervention, however, due to the complexity of the in vivo environment it is difficult to determine the relative importance of each component in order to rationally create a clinically effective strategy. In vivo, non-neural cells at the injury site influence neuronal re-growth, but the ability to quantitatively examine these cell-cell interactions is limited. Using primary rat neurons and non-neural cells our goal is to mechanistically understand the cues presented by glia responsible for promoting and guiding neurite outgrowth following injury in an engineered microenvironment.

 

Towards our goals, current on going projects:

• Neuronal Guidance by Oriented Peripheral Nervous System Glia, Schwann cells (JD WATSON AWARD)li>
• Neuronal Guidance by Non-neural cells
• Development of 3D Nerve Guidance Channels for Spinal Cord (NYS Spinal Cord Research Program)
• Impact of Nanomaterial Size Regimes on Mammalian Cell Growth