The Christopher Murphy Laboratory
Faculty > Christopher J. Murphy
Christopher J. Murphy
Professor, Department of Surgical Sciences
School of Veterinary Medicine
murphyc@svm.vetmed.wisc.edu
Christopher Murphy Laboratory Home Page
Organ System/Disease Focus
Wound healing, organ preservation, biophysical cueing and modulation of cell behavior.
Aligned Research Focus
Engineering of the wound bed, stem cell cryopreservation and differentiation, and biophysical cues.
Research Description
Significant challenges in human embryonic stem cell biology include the maintenance of an undifferentiated lineages as well as devising optimal strategies to coax large populations of cells down pathways of preferred differentiation (e.g. neurons). Numerous environmental factors influencing stem cell behavior have been investigated including surface chemistry, growth factors, and mechanical forces.
Our laboratory has previously reported, for a number of cell types, that topographic features, independent of surface chemistry, profoundly modulate fundamental cell behaviors. We hypothesized that topographic cues, in the nano to micron scale range, would play a role in modulating stem cell behaviors.
Selected References
McFarlin DR, Finn KJ, Nealey PF, Murphy CJ. Nanoscale topography modulates human embryonic stem cell self-renewal. The American Society for Cell Biology 46th Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA. 2006.