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Project: New technologies and strategies for stem cell manufacturing bioprocess monitoring and artificial intelligence-based modeling

Acronym: SMART
Main Objective:
SMART aims to develop new monitoring and modeling strategies envisaging more efficient bioreactor-based processes for the manufacturing of hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes for biomedical applications. Our specific objectives are:
- To develop new sensors for in-line monitoring of pH, oxygen and glucose concentration in small-scale Vertical-Wheel bioreactors;
- To characterize the hiPSC-derived cells generated in bioreactors, throughout the culture time, namely in terms of transcriptomic and metabolomic profile;
- To establish a model of hiPSC cardiac differentiation in VWB for quality control, using artificial intelligence to integrate bioprocess monitoring data with biological data from omics analysis.
To achieve these objectives, the research project comprises a highly interdisciplinary team, which includes members from two Research Groups of iBB, the Stem Cell Engineering Research Group (SCERG) and the Biospectroscopy and Interfaces Research Group (BSIRG), as well as members of Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT)/Pattern and Image Analysis (PIA-Lx) and international academic and industrial collaborators. The project tasks will be executed by researchers with complementary competencies, including bioprocess engineers with expertise in hiPSC bioprocessing, chemical researchers with expertise in fluorescence spectroscopy, and electrical engineers with expertise in artificial intelligence/machine learning.
Reference: PTDC/EQU-EQU/3853/2020
Funding: FCT
Approval Date: 07-11-2020
Start Date: 01-01-2021
End Date: 01-01-2025
Team: Ana Luisa Nobre Fred, Hugo Humberto Plácido da Silva, Sofia de Pinto e Lobo da Silva Agostinho
Groups: Pattern and Image Analysis – Lx
Partners: iBB/IST - Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences
Local Coordinator: Ana Luisa Nobre Fred

Associated Publications
  • 2Papers in Conferences
  • S. P. A. Agostinho, J. M. S. Cabral, A. L. N. Fred, C. A. V. Rodrigues, Unsupervised Analysis of Whole Transcriptome Data from Pluripotent Stem Cells, International Conference of CellAgri Portugal, Braga, Portugal, Vol., pp. -, September, 2023,
    | Abstract
    | BibTex
  • S. P. A. Agostinho, J. M. S. Cabral, A. L. N. Fred, C. A. V. Rodrigues, Unsupervised Cardiac Differentiation Stage Portraying and Pseudotime Mapping Based on Gene Expression Data, International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies BIOSTEC, Lisbon, Portugal, Vol. Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 3: BIOINFORMATICS, pp. 109 - 120, February, 2023,
    | Abstract
    | BibTex