Overview | Research | Grants/Awards | Teaching | Publications
Michael J Lysaght is the Director of Brown University's Center for Biomedical Engineering. His area of specialization is the therapeutic application of synthetic membranes in hemodialysis, apheresis, and tissue engineering. He also studies and has recently described in several influential publications the complex interplay of technology, economics, and public policy in shaping contemporary and emerging organ-replacement therapies.
He received an AB from Georgetown University, a BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from MIT and, later in life, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of New South Wales. Dr Lysaght's professional career was spent in industry prior to joining the Brown faculty in 1994.
Dr. Lysaght worked at Amicon Corporation from 1966 to 1979. Amicon was an exciting and dynamic MIT spin-off back when university-spawned startups were somewhat of a rarity. While at Amicon, he had increasing responsibility in research groups which introduced polysulfone hollow fiber membranes into the extracorporeal therapies for renal failure (1, 2), which developed the first biohybrid artificial pancreas in mice (3), and which demonstrated the technical feasibility of membrane processes for the separation of plasma from whole blood (4). In 1980 he left Amicon, accepting an invitation to spend a year as a guest scientist in the membrane laboratories of Dr. Wolfgang Pusch at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany. Dr. Pusch has since passed away, but in the early eighties, he and his laboratories were a Mecca for rigorous theoretical and experimental studies in membrane transport. Dr. Lysaght decided to extend his expatriate experience and in 1981 and 1982 worked with Dr. Hans Gurland at the University Hospital of Munich. There he conducted laboratory-based and clinical research in hemodialysis transport (5) and membrane plasmapheresis (6). Life in Germany was very agreeable and the opportunity for work experience at both the Max Planck and in a hospital setting was broadening.
In 1984, Dr. Lysaght returned to the United States and joined Baxter International in northern Illinois. At the time, Baxter was one of the world's largest medical device companies and the global leader in products for the treatment of renal failure. He served first as Director of Membrane Science and later as Vice President for Renal Research. Although primarily responsible for research management while at Baxter, Dr. Lysaght made several enduring contributions to the literature of peritoneal dialysis (7, 8, 9) including the initial use of "KT/V" to quantify CAPD and the definitive study comparing preservation of residual function in peritoneal and hemodialysis. In 1989, he left Baxter and returned to New England to help start CytoTherapeutics. CytoTherapeutics was Rhode Island's first biotechnology venture. He served as Vice President and chief technical executive at CytoTherapeutics from 1989 through 1994. In this capacity, he was responsible, along with his colleagues, for the first successful transplantation of immunoisolated xenogeneic cells in man (10, 11). Cytotherapeutics no longer exists in its original form, but its technologies persist in several successor companies: Stem Cells Inc. (Palo Alto, CA), Neurotech Corp. (Lincoln, RI), and Modex Therapeutics SA (Lausunne Switzerland).
Since 1995, he has been at Brown University, where he is currently Professor of Medical Science and Engineering and Director of Brown's Center for Biomedical Engineering. In 1996, he was asked by the late Pierre Galletti to spearhead efforts to increase the local economic impact of Brown-developed biotechnology. This eventually led to the formation of the Rhode Island Center for Cellular Medicine, a public-private organization chartered to facilitate the creation of Biotech startups in Rhode Island. Dr. Lysaght served as RICCM's first president from 1996-1999 and still serves on its board. RICCM, now called the Slater Center for Biomedical Technology, has been instrumental in the creation of over a dozen biotechnology firms. In 2000, Dr. Lysaght assumed responsibility for organization and oversight of the formation of a program and center in Biomedical Engineering at Brown. An undergraduate concentration in biomedical engineering was initiated in 2001; more information is available at the BioMedical Engineering Homepage. A graduate program in Biomedical Engineering was inaugurated in 2003. Research programs in biomaterials, tissue engineering, and neuroengineering are expanding and coalescing.
While at Brown, Dr. Lysaght's laboratory research has focused on new therapies for End Stage Renal Disease (12) and tissue engineering approaches to the treatment of diabetes (13) and of deteriorating cartilage (14) . He has also conducted and published extensive studies on the demographics and economic impact of organ replacement technology (15, 16) and tissue engineering (17, 18, 19). He was recently described by Baron's as one of the nation's "top medical thinkers."
In April 2002 Dr Lysaght received Brown's Elizabeth H Leduc award for Excellence in Teaching in the Life Sciences. In May 2003, he was awarded the class of 2003 Barrett Hazeltine Citation, also for excellence in teaching.
He currently teaches all or part of three courses.
BI 0008 - Biotechnology Management. This course is designed for Juniors and Seniors who are considering in an industrial career in Biotechnology, or just interested this aspect of the field. It deals with product development, the FDA, patents, case studies, and the human side of entrepreneurship. It is offered in the spring semester of even-numbered years: 2004, 2006.
BI 0017 - Biotechnology in Medicine. A broad overview of the contemporary medical applications of biology and biomedical engineering , including pharmaceuticals, implantable and extracorporeal medical devices, organ transplantation, and newly emerging therapies such as xenotransplantation, stem cells, reproductive medicine, and therapeutic cloning. Originally intended for first year students, this has become an increasingly popular elective for later-year biology majors as well.
BI 0108 - Organ Replacement. Describes the therapy format and physical/quantitative design principles of organ replacement and substitutive medicine, including pacemakers, heart-valves, cardiothoracic surgery, neuroprosthetics, orthopedic implants, hemodialysis, transplantation, and the next generations of organ replacement technology. About half the students are engineering concentrators, the remaining are from general biology and premed. Not for the faint of heart.
Dr Lysaght is the author/editor of three books and has contributed over 200 original papers and scholarly reviews to the technical literature. He holds 25 US patents, along with multiple corresponding foreign counterparts. He is a founder of the International Society of Blood Purification, and a current or past officer or board member of many national and international learned societies concerned with organ substitution. He is a Trustee and Executive Committee Member of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs (ASAIO), Treasurer and Council-member of the International Society for Blood Purification (ISBP), and a Trustee of the International Federation of Artificial Organs (IFAO). In 1994 he was elected as a founding fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers (AIMBE). In 1995, he was chairman of the Keystone symposium on Encapsulated Cell Therapy. In 1997, he served as Congress President of the 11th International Congress of the International Society of Artificial Organs in Providence, Rhode Island and in 1998 he hosted the 14th Congress of the International Society of Blood Purification in Newport, Rhode Island. More recently, he organized and chaired the 2004 NIH Conference on Immunobarriers in Islet Transplantation.
He lives in East Greenwich, RI with his wife Carmen, a psychiatric clinical nurse specialist, with whom he shares a love of the mountains, the ocean, and self actualization.
Download Michael Lysaght's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format
