August 31, 2026 - Dr. Mo Ebrahimkhani, Associate Professor of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, was recently featured by Pitt Health Sciences for his work exploring a new approach to engineering complex human tissues.
In a paper published in Cell Systems, Ebrahimkhani and Kamyar Keshavarz, a bioengineering doctoral candidate at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, introduce the concept of “synthetic tissue ecology,” a framework that applies principles from systems ecology to the engineering of multicellular tissues and organoids.
The approach views tissues as complex ecosystems in which interactions among different cell types help shape the behavior, organization, and function of the overall system. By better understanding these relationships, researchers may be able to identify important components that are missing from tissues constructed outside the body and develop more robust and reproducible human tissue models.
This framework could help advance the development of engineered tissues and organoids for studying human development and disease, regenerative medicine, and the discovery of new therapeutic approaches.
Read the full Pitt Health Sciences feature, “Engineering Tissues as Ecosystems,” for more about Dr. Ebrahimkhani and his team’s work: