• Introduction to iPSc
• Methods for inducing pluripotency
• Biology of hepatocytes
• Hepatocytes for drug metabolism
• Conditions for differentiating hepatocytes
• Models to study hepatocyte injury in vivo and in vitro
• Hepatocyte cultures in toxicology
• Hepatocyte culture models for studying infectious diseases

• iPSc cultures (derivation and maintenance)
• Hepatocyte differentiation protocol (media, matrix, atmosphere)
• Cryopreservation
• Validation methods
• Conduct a Cyp assay
• Cytoxicity assays

Course Director

Dr. Joseph Bressler is a research scientist at Kennedy Krieger Institute. He is also an associate professor of environmental health sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Bressler received his bachelor's of science degree in biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1973 and his doctoral degree in physiology from Rutgers University in 1978. His post-doctoral training at UCLA was in neurosciences, where he studied the involvement of glial cells in response to toxic agents. After his post-doctoral training, Dr. Bressler continued his studies on glial cells at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. Dr. Bressler has been a research scientist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute since 1988.

Guest Lecturers and Lab Instructors

	Johannes Elvin, Ph.D. Johannes Elvin is a Senior Production and Service Specialist and joined Takara Bio Europe in Sweden in 2018. He obtained his PhD from Gothenburg University in renal medicine and transitioned into the field of diabetes and obesity for his postdoctoral research. He has been working extensively with in vitro cell culture, lentiviral transduction and protein expression modification. He is now handling and running service projects aimed at reprogramming somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells.
	Jenny Johannisson Jenny Johannisson joined Takara Bio Europe in Sweden in 2007. She holds a master’s degree in biotechnology from Chalmers University. After graduating, she worked on molecular modifications of adenoviruses. When she joined Takara Bio, her focus was on the culture of undifferentiated stem cells and reprogramming of fibroblasts using mRNA. She is now the Global Product Manager for Takara Bio’s stem cell portfolio.
	Lucie Low, Ph.D. Dr. Lucie Low joined NCATS in 2016 as the Tissue Chip Program Manager for the NIH Microphysiological Systems program, coordinating over 20 research teams working on the development, validation and application of microphysiological systems. Prior to this, she was a Research Fellow at NIH, and Postdoctoral Fellow in Montreal at McGill University, where she studied the effects of chronic pain on brain structure and function. She gained her Bachelors’ Degree from Oxford University (UK) and completed her Masters and PhD in Neuroscience at University College London (UK).
	Tea Soon Park, Ph.D. Dr. Park is a Research Associate at Division of Pediatric Oncology and Institute for Cell Engineering, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Foundation of her researches is on generation of clinically relevant human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) into hemato-vascular lineage and enhancement of functional pluripotency using naïve reversion method. Using these technologies, her current research focuses on treatment of ischemic damages (e.g. ischemic retinopathy) and diabetic vascular complications with iPSC derived progenitor cells.
	Jennifer L. Groebner Jennifer Groebner is currently a Ph.D. candidate at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. She currently investigates the molecular mechanisms that lead to the progression of alcoholic liver disease. Her focus is on alcohol-induced changes in microtubule dynamics that lead to early stages of liver injury. Previously, as a Research Microbiologist at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID), she developed and evaluated vaccines against viral pathogens (Ebola, Marburg), toxins (botulinum neurotoxin) and bacterial (anthrax, plague) diseases. Jennifer holds a MS in Biotechnology with a bioinformatics concentration from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Biochemistry from Minnesota State University, Mankato.