Teruo Okano, Ph.D.

Professor Teruo Okano is currently an Emeritus Professor at Tokyo Women’s Medical University (TWMU) in Tokyo, Japan. He is also a distinguished adjunct professor in the University of Utah Department of Molecular Pharmaceutics, and is the co-director of CSTEC@Utah. He pioneered cell sheet engineering technology by developing the temperature-responsive polymer-coated dishes necessary for creating and harvesting cell sheets.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Cell sheet technology uses poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PIPAAm)-grafted temperature-responsive culture dishes that allow cells to spontaneously detach as confluent sheets without the damaging enzymes necessary for standard cell harvest. These cell sheets maintain the natural extracellular matrix (ECM), cell-cell junctions, and surface proteins that are broken or damaged during traditional enzymatic detachment methods and can spontaneously adhere when transplanted, ensuring localization and retention of cells at the transplantation site and negating the need for scaffold support materials. Cell sheet technology is widely applicable and has shown clinical success in regenerating a variety of tissues in vivo.