Tissue Engineering Across Lifespan

NIH Director’s Lecture | Wednesday, February 25, 2026 | 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET

Jennifer H. Elisseeff, PhD

Morton Goldberg Professor of Ophthalmology

Interim head of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

John Hopkins Biomedical Engineering and School of Medicine

jhe@jhu.edu

Website

Jennifer Elisseeff is the Morton Goldberg Professor of Ophthalmology at the School of Medicine, and the interim head of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, with an appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She is a pioneer in the development and commercial translation of injectable biomaterials for regenerative therapies.

Elisseeff was recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She was previously elected to the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine and is the first Johns Hopkins faculty member to be elected to all three National Academies. She serves on the scientific advisory boards of Bausch and Lomb, Kythera Biopharmaceutical, and Cellular Bioengineering Inc. Elisseeff has received awards including the Carnegie Mellon Young Alumni Award, Arthritis Investigator Award from the Arthritis Foundation, Yasuda Award from the Society of Physical Regulation in Medicine and Biology, and was named by Technology Review magazine as a top innovator under 35 in 2002 and top 10 technologies to change the future. In 2008, she was elected a fellow in the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and a Young Global Leader in the World Economic Forum. She has published more than 200 articles, book chapters, and patent applications and given more 130 national and international invited lectures.

Elisseeff received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD in medical engineering from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. After doctoral studies, she was a Fellow at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences Pharmacology Research Associate Program where she worked in the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. In 2001, she became an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. In 2004, Elisseeff cofounded Cartilix, Inc., a startup that translated adhesive and biomaterial technologies for treating orthopedic disease, acquired by Biomet Inc in 2009. In 2009, she also founded Aegeria Soft Tissue and Tissue Repair, new startups focused on soft tissue regeneration and wound healing.

Summary

Tissue engineering began with the premise that biomaterial environments could be designed to instruct cell behavior and rebuild tissues. Early work in my laboratory focused on designing biomaterial scaffolds that controlled stem cell survival, differentiation, and tissue formation. It established how physical, chemical, and mechanical cues regulate cell fate. The desire to translate to the clinic, shifted our tissue engineering strategy from building replacement tissues toward engineering endogenous repair. Clinical translation uncovered non-classical roles for immune cells in regeneration and fibrosis and led to the concept of biomaterials-directed regenerative immunology, in which immune cells are central drivers of tissue outcomes rather than barriers to healing. 

More recently, tissues have emerged as dynamic immune–stromal networks whose structure and function change across the lifespan. Senescent cells act as potent signaling hubs, influencing inflammation, repair, fibrosis, vascular remodeling, and tumor progression. Chronic injuries, such as osteoarthritis, and fibrosis create persistent wound-like states that reprogram local cellular and systemic networks, while cancers exploit these same wound and repair programs to evade immune control. Aging emerges as a progressive reorganization of immune–stromal communication networks, driven in part by the accumulation of senescent cells and inflammation that alter tissue signaling and repair capacity. 

In this lecture, I will describe the evolution of tissue engineering from scaffold design to the engineering of cellular communication networks, integrating biomaterials, immunology, and computational advances. By treating tissues as adaptive networks, this framework offers new strategies to intervene earlier in disease and restore health across lifespan. The lecture will conclude with new research that uncovered a wound-tumor network with profound implications on cancer immunotherapy responses.

Learning Objectives

After participating in this activity, learners should be able to:

1. Describe how biomaterial properties influence immune and stromal cell behavior and how these interactions regulate tissue regeneration and fibrosis across different clinical contexts.
2. Explain the role of immune–stromal communication networks, including senescent cell signaling, in aging, chronic injury, and cancer progression, and how these shared mechanisms impact therapeutic responses.
3. Identify emerging tissue engineering strategies that target cellular communication networks to enhance regenerative outcomes and improve the efficacy of immunotherapies across the human lifespan.