We are now able to grow lots of different types of tissues in the laboratory, such as bone, muscle, heart, and skin. The intention is that these "engineered tissues" can be used either as artificial living grafts to treat patients with tissue damage, or to study how human tissues grow, become diseased, or respond to drugs. However, these applications are limited by our inability to grow tissues with lifelike blood vessels (vasculature). Human tissues are nourished by a vast, interconnected network of blood vessels of all different sizes, from large arteries/veins (up to 20 millimetres, internal diameter) to intricate capillaries (down to 4 micrometres, internal diameter). Yet there is currently no method capable of recreating blood vessels across these length scales within an artificial tissue. This causes two important problems: (i) it restricts the size of the tissue grafts that we can grow, and (ii) prevents us from using our tissue models to effectively study mechanisms of health, disease, and drug delivery that involve lifelike vasculature. Dr James Armstrong (specialism in tissue engineering) worked closely with Dr Liliang Ouyang (specialism in bioprinting) at Imperial College London between 2017-2020, where we used 3D bioprinting to grow artificial blood vessels. In particular, we developed a ground-breaking method for generating complex, interconnected channels with the inner walls efficiently covered with endothelial cells (one of the important cell types that lines blood vessels). This Overseas Travel Grant will enable us to resume this collaborative work in our new posts at the University of Bristol and Tsinghua University, respectively. In particular, this will fund two researchers from the Armstrong Group to visit Tsinghua University for a three-week period of two-way knowledge exchange. The Ouyang Group will deliver training in three new bioprinting methods, while in turn, receiving training in how to grow more biologically-complex blood vessels. This training will upskill both teams, enable us to continue this collaborative work beyond the lifetime of the award, and pursue further grant funding to consolidate this overseas partnership.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

It is well established that human ES cells (hESC), and iPS cells, can gain chromosomal abnormalities during prolonged culture. These changes include the gain of whole or partial chromosomes as well as structure rearrangements. Karyotypically abnormal hESC often show signs of neoplastic transformation and defects in differentiation, so that they may pose significant dangers for their potential use in regenerative medicine, while these changes may affect their use in other applications including toxicology, drug discovery and disease modelling. It seems likely that those chromosomal changes that involve rearrangements of the DNA result from defects during DNA synthesis in S phase of the cell cycle. However, many changes involve the gain of whole chromosomes, strongly suggesting that these changes arise from defects at mitosis resulting in chromosomal non-dysjunction and unequal distributions of chromosome to the daughter cells. It is likely that the mitotic machinery, particularly the spindle assembly checkpoint, which governs the equal separation of the sister chromatids, is different in ES cells from somatic cells, reflecting specific requirements in the early embryo and it is reported that checkpoint-apoptosis uncoupling occurs in human and mouse ESCs, but the underlying molecular mechanism remains unexplored. In this project we will focus on the expression and role of the Aurora kinases which are key regulators of cell division. They are often highly expressed by cancer cells and in our previous studies we also found that they are also enriched in early mammalian embryos and embryonic stem cells. This enrichment may be associated with the fast cell division rate of embryonic cells, but may also make these cells susceptible to the mis-regulation of the mitotic checkpoint resulting in the accumulation of chromosomal abnormality. In particular, Aurora kinase C, an Aurora kinase normally expressed in germ cells, has overlapping as well as distinct functions from Aurora B during mouse preimplantation development and the presence of Aurora C may contribute to the unique properties of mitotic checkpoint in hESCs. We will use small molecule inhibition, siRNA knocking-down and mRNA over expression to disrupt the function of Aurora B and C and study the short-term and long-term effects on hESC apoptosis, self-renewal and differentiation. The results will provide insights into the function of mitotic checkpoints in hESCs and help inform approaches to reduce or prevent the occurrence of karyotype abnormality in hESCs and improve their genome stability.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

An age of globalization makes it more than ever urgent to ask: what processes of transmission mediate literary and cultural exchanges between China and the West? China's complex interactions with its others are key to understanding its relation to modernity. Humanities scholarship on the translations and transformations involved in such interactions have diverged. Some have posed, from a Western point of view, the alterity of China. Others have focused on the negotiations of difference and equivalence involved in any cultural encounter, and on forms of transmission enabled or transformed by these negotiations. \n\nThe Network will focus on the oppositions and relations through which Chinese modernity has been shaped and imagined. The historical origins of 'the modern' have been variously located in western formations: Reformation, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, or the emergence of an Avant-Garde. Defining the modern, however, is not only a question of periodization, but also of geography. As Lydia Liu observes, 'The problem of translation has become increasingly central to critical reflections on modernity... The fact that one can speak about a varied range of modernities suggests an extraordinary faith in the translatability of modernity and its universal ethos.' \n\nAt the heart of this problem are specific acts, sites, and theories of translation; relationships between universal and particular; and the limits or possibilities of cultural commensurability. Whether at the level of language and culture, or concepts, technologies and techniques, translation defines the field of Chinese modernism and modernity. The processes of transmission include literary and visual translation, as well as contextualization and reception, but also raise issues of translatability in the broadest sense. The study of modernity in relation to cultural transmission has proved increasingly attractive not only to scholars of literary and cultural studies in China and the West, but to translation theorists, critical theorists, and theorists of the visual. \n\nThe activities of the Network will be organized into three strands: \n\nTranslating Modernism: Scholars working on the relationship between Western and Chinese modernisms increasingly seek to go beyond the question of what in Chinese modernism corresponds to or derives from European modernism.\n\nTranslating Theory: The take-up of western post-modern cultural and critical theory in China since the 1990s has been dramatic, yet poses questions about its translation into new contexts.\n\nTranslating Culture: Contemporary Chinese artistic and cultural production has never been more accessible to global audiences, but issues of commensurability arise in both elite and popular culture.\n\nThe rationale of the Network is to increase UK research capacity into modern and contemporary Chinese culture. While work on cultural transmission to and from China has been vibrant in the US academy over the past fifteen years, the field remains comparatively weak in the UK. The aim of the three-way Network between CRASSH, the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Tsinghua University, and Yale's Council on East Asian Studies is to create and sustain relationships with academics in both China and the US, where the field is further advanced. The Network will play a key role in developing research capacity through a programme of workshops, seminars, visiting fellowships, and two major international conferences in Cambridge and Beijing. \n\nIts participants have expertise in literary theory, cultural studies, translation theory, modernism, and contemporary Chinese culture, including visual culture. The activities of the Network will be of interest to academics and practitioners in the fields of comparative literature, cultural studies, critical and cultural theory, translation studies, and Chinese studies.