The Johns Hopkins Translational Tissue Engineering Center (TTEC), a collaborative venture established in 2010 between the Wilmer Eye Institute and Johns Hopkins University's Department of Biomedical Engineering, is revolutionizing regenerative medicine by fostering interdisciplinary innovation and training the next generation of biomedical leaders.

And while what TTEC does is applicable to medicine as a whole, its location — the fifth floor of Wilmer’s Robert H. and Clarice Smith Building, designed to facilitate collaboration between researchers with its open, airy, glass-enclosed labs — has naturally brought together ophthalmologists and biomedical engineers to work on new platforms and tools that can be applied broadly to regenerative medicine and biological systems. Those efforts have led to new treatments and even startup companies in some cases.

TTEC’s faculty work across multiple-length scales, from molecules and cells all the way up to tissues and organ systems. This multi-scale approach allows faculty and researchers to tackle complex biological challenges.

This cross-disciplinary collaboration has the potential to drive major advances, says TTEC director Warren Grayson, Ph.D., the Morton F. Goldberg Professor of Ophthalmology. “The potential for improving the health span and quality of life of individuals is what interests me, the ability to impact people’s lives,” he says. “Developing the technologies that advances what we can do all together is really the most exciting component of this.”

TTEC also provides education for a community of about 130 trainees, ranging from undergraduate students to postdoctoral and clinical fellows, who will take the skills and knowledge they gain from TTEC to drive meaningful change in medicine, engineering and other fields.

Transforming musculoskeletal treatments

In Grayson’s lab, the Laboratory for Craniofacial and Orthopedic Tissue Engineering, he and his team develop stem cell and biomaterial-based strategies with the goal of revolutionizing treatments for musculoskeletal injuries, such as bone and skeletal muscle damage. This includes muscles that control eye movement and bone structures that support the eye itself. The lab’s ultimate goal is to create patient-specific grafts with functional biological and mechanical characteristics.

Grayson, whose background is in biomedical engineering, is drawn to the idea of transforming what is known about improving health and pushing the boundaries of medical science. “We all grew up looking at cartoons that delved into science fiction and fantasizing about what could be possible,” he says. “Taking what could be possible and making it a reality — that potential for doing that — is what excites me, and what excites people is that we're getting that right.”

An eye on proteins

Jamie Spangler, Ph.D.’s lab is all about proteins. Spangler, the William R. Brody Faculty Scholar and an associate professor of biomedical engineering, chemical & biomolecular engineering, oncology, ophthalmology, and molecular microbiology and immunology, and her team work to redesign and engineer proteins to manipulate biology and overcome deficiencies of existing drugs. They take this approach and apply it to range of different disease conditions, including those that affect the eye.

Among Spangler’s eye-related Wilmer collaborations is one with retina specialist Akrit Sodhi, M.D., Ph.D., the Branna and Irving Sisenwein Professor of Ophthalmology, in which her lab is working to engineer new proteins that can stop growth factors from inducing angiogenesis — the growth of blood vessels — in ocular diseases.

A collaboration like this would not be possible without TTEC, Spangler says, adding that it provides a great ecosystem for students, trainees and faculty. “There’s a culture and environment that really enables these types of synergistic interactions between faculty with diverse expertise in different fields,” she says.

Tackling blindness together

For more than a decade, Peter Campochiaro, M.D. and Jordan Green, Ph.D. have collaborated on research that has translated from early discoveries to clinical trials, helping patients with previously untreatable eye diseases. What brought the two of them to work together was the idea of new types of therapeutics to help those who are going blind.

They, together with biomedical engineering professor Aleksander Popel, initially focused on developing a peptide to treat wet age-related macular degeneration that would have greater potency and durability than the current treatments at the time. What came out of that was a startup company and a product that is now in Phase 1/2a clinical trials. Campochiaro and Green have since expanded their focus to include gene therapy for inherited retinal diseases and the launch of a new biotech company. They were drawn to these areas due to large unmet medical need: Wet AMD is a leading cause of blindness, and inherited retinal diseases often cause childhood blindness for which no treatments exist.

The interdisciplinary approach that TTEC offers has been key to their innovative work. Campochiaro, the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Professor of Ophthalmology and Neuroscience at Wilmer, provides clinical expertise while Green, the Herschel L. Seder Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Ophthalmology, contributes engineering knowledge to develop new therapeutic strategies.

“We have a lot of knowledge regarding the clinical aspects of the disease, what it means to patients, and the biology — how things work in in the cells and the tissues,” Campochiaro says. “But when it comes to creating new treatments, it's really valuable to us to have the ability to interact with people like Jordan, who have a lot of knowledge regarding the engineering aspects that are needed to develop them.”

“Hopkins, with the strength of Wilmer and BME, may be the only place in the world where you have the ability for it to happen this way,” added Green. “Having this very collegial, collaborative environment, it fosters the opportunity to be innovative and creative in a sustainable way. I think it’s a very special place.”