Title: Bioelectricity in tissue engineering: The role of electrical stimulation and electroconductive biomaterials in macrophage function and spinal cord therapeutics
Join us for a guest seminar with Professor Michael Monaghan, Trinity College Dublin – a leading researcher in electroconductive biomaterials, cardiac tissue regeneration and FLIM imaging. His interdisciplinary work spans everything from macrophage metabolism to engineering cardiac organoids, and he recently established Ireland’s first BioBrillouin microscope.
Date: Wednesday 16 July
Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm
Location: Lecture Theatre 1
This talk will explore the emerging therapeutic potential of ‘electroceutical’ approaches in regenerative medicine – from modulating immune cell behaviour to targeting macrophage metabolism in spinal cord repair.
Biography: Michael Monaghan is Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. His group’s primary research areas are in electroconductive biomaterials, cardiac tissue regeneration, innate immunology, and real-time imaging of extracellular matrix components and metabolism in differentiation and disease. He leads a number of interdisciplinary projects ranging from immunometabolism, evaluation of fibrosis, and induced pluripotent stem cell derivitisation of cardiac organoids and resident immune cell populations.
His expertise and knowledge of FLIM microscopy has been recognised through publication of studies in several internationally renowned journals and awarding of a Horizon Europe MSCA-doctoral network (2021) based on FLIM excellence where he is the lead coordinator. Most recently, he is the 2023 recipient of the TERMIS Robert Brown Early Career Investigator Award (2023), a European Research Council Consolidator Awardee (PiezoMac, 2023) and a Research Ireland Frontier for the Future Laureate (BrillFLIM, 2024). Recently (2025), he established the first BioBrillouin microscope in Ireland and the first commercial system in the world to non-invasively profile cellular viscoelasticity.
Full abstract: Bioelectricity pervades through each and every tissue in our bodies and immune cells- in particular macrophages, are no exception. In this work I will outline work in our group whereby we have pin-pointed a therapeutic potential of electric field stimulation in modulating human blood-derived macrophage behaviour towards a regenerative endpoint- ‘electroceutical’ therapy if you will. Looking in parallel with human blood-derived macrophages towards iPSC-derived resident macrophages our work unveils an important and critical role of resident macrophage presence in in vitro cardiac organoids and the unique improvement they yield in engineered heart tissue models. Finally, this talk turns to macrophage metabolism as a druggable target which can be mediated directly by biomaterials and electric fields in the context of spinal cord injury, and the application of non-invasive imaging to classify their phenotype.