Alison Chambon

Class of 2018

Education: Blended BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering at Cal Poly

 

Biography

Alison is interested in regenerative medicine because she thinks it is incredible that human tissue has so many properties that can be harnessed and controlled in order to lead to more biocompatible and long-lasting life-saving treatments. She would like to focus on tissue-engineering scaffolding or 3D bioprinting. She is not sure what exactly she is looking for career-wise, but she knows that she would like to work in a research and development field for regenerative technologies.

Alison is currently completing her internship at Organovo. She is working in the R&D Department in the Tissue Applications group. Organovo creates functional human tissues using their propriety 3D-bioprinting technology. Alison’s project consists of creating iPSC-derived kidney organoids with bioprinting technology and evaluating the organoids as a model for preclinical drug testing. 30% of new drug compounds fail in early preclinical studies due to drug-induced nephrotoxicity. Using kidney organoids for preclinical testing would provide a safe and early model to determine human kidney response to new drug compounds prior to clinical trials.