HSL Meeting: Brandon Krupczak, Dr. Fabian Möller (12-1p, 3/6, Rm 31-270)

This coming Monday, we will have 2 talks, 30-minutes-long each. First talk is by Brandon Krupczak, followed by Dr. Fabian Möller. Details below.

HSL Meeting

Monday, March 06, 2023
12-1pm
Room 31-270

Zoom link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/99313053821

Talk #1: 

  • Speaker: Brandon Krupczak
  • Title: Enhancing Cell Therapy for Treatment of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome 

 

  • Abstract—Cell therapy uses living cells as a therapeutic tool to treat disease. Mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) present an attractive choice for use in cell therapy given their innate therapeutic properties – including the ability to endogenously navigate to sites of injury and secrete pro-regenerative paracrine signals – as well as their innate characteristics that make them well-suited for manufacturing. Despite these advantages, MSCs have struggled to reach the clinic; only ten MSC products have achieved regulatory approval worldwide, and no MSC products are approved for use in the United States. Heterogeneity in cell product leads to inconsistent therapeutic efficacy, limiting the clinical translatability of this therapeutic class. My research has focused on improvements in culturing methods to limit heterogeneity development during cell manufacture. Concurrently, I have explored strategies to prime MSC therapeutic efficacy to better treat a critical indication: acute respiratory distress syndrome. 
     
  • Speaker Bio—Brandon Krupczak is a PhD Student in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program. He obtained his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech, where he researched lipid nanoparticle drug delivery under Dr. James Dahlman. Between undergrad and grad school, Brandon was a founding team member at startup biotech company Guide Therapeutics, where he advanced academic research work into industry to enhance the efficiency and predictive power of drug delivery screening. Brandon is currently pursuing a Bioastronautics certificate at MIT and hopes to be a NASA Astronaut when he grows up. 

 

Talk #2: 

  • Speaker: Dr. Fabian Möller
  • Title: Performance in Spaceflight and Underwater Environments

 

  • Abstract— This talk discusses some of the work and findings from the 120-day and 240-day SIRIUS isolation experiments, investigating the efficacy of aerobic and strength exercise training on cardiorespiratory capacities and kinetics. Furthermore, the challenges and possibilities for applied studies in the underwater environment are briefly addressed.
     
  • Speaker Bio—Fabian graduated from the German Sport University Cologne with a Bachelor's and Master's degree. He worked as an undergrad and grad student research assistant at the Institute of Physiology and Anatomy, Department of Exercise Physiology, investigating the effects of unique environmental conditions on human performance in tilt-table, parabolic flight, bed-rest, and various exercise conditions. Fabian started his Ph.D. in 2019, looking into physical and cognitive performance in spaceflight analogs during experiments on countermeasure exercise efficiency in long-term simulated spaceflight. Furthermore, his work as a diving instructor and involvement in the underwater extra-vehicular activity training of ESA's astronaut corps emphasized the unique similarities between microgravity and the underwater environment. On this basis, he incorporated several underwater studies on sport-specific and astronaut performance in his dissertational work. Since 2023, Fabian has worked as a post-doc lecturer at the German Sport University Cologne.