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The fostering of interdisciplinarity is increasingly requested of research organizations. However, conventional approaches to academic research management limit our understanding of the way interdisciplinary research (IDR) centers integrate multiple disciplines. This paper proposes a multilevel approach to explore the patterns of knowledge integration and the forms of research organization emerging from the practices and activities of IDR centers. Several bibliometric-based, network-oriented and visualization-rich approaches are used. The cases of two prominent IDR centers are considered: Harvard University's Wyss Institute and Kyoto University's WPI-iCeMS. At the macro level, our results show similarities in the scientific positioning of both IDR centers, which translate into differences in the nature, intensity and drivers of their knowledge interconnections at the meso-level. At the micro-level, we demonstrate that far from idealizations of full convergence, the realities of IDR centers are characterized by heterogeneous patchworks of multi-trajectory research domains-some of these enabling, others generating interdisciplinary knowledge. Differences in knowledge integration occur between but also, and more importantly, within IDR centers. Thus, tailored strategies tuned to the particularities of organizations and topic-based forms of research organization appear to cope better with interdisciplinary knowledge. The understanding of these inter-and intra-organizational differences proves crucial for effectively fostering knowledge integration. An integrated model relating levels of research management and visualization approaches is proposed for the management and assessment of knowledge integration in IDR centers. Multilevel exploration of the realities of interdisciplinary research centers for the management of knowledge integration

The skin of mammals is a multilayered and multicellular tissue that forms an environmental barrier with key functions in protection, regulation, and sensation. While animal models have long served to study the basic functions of the skin in vivo, new insights are expected from in vitro models of human skin development. Human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) have proven to be invaluable tools for studying human development in vitro. To understand the mechanisms regulating human skin homeostasis and injury repair at the molecular level, recent efforts aim to differentiate PSCs towards skin epidermal keratinocytes, dermal fibroblasts, and skin appendages such as hair follicles and sebaceous glands. Here, we present an overview of the literature describing strategies for human PSC differentiation towards the components of skin, with a particular focus on keratinocytes. We highlight fundamental advances in the field employing patient-derived human induced PSCs (iPSCs) and skin organoid generation. Importantly, PSCs allow researchers to model inherited skin diseases in the search for potential treatments. Skin differentiation from human PSCs holds the potential to clarify human skin biology.

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Newly emerging therapeutic technologies have the potential to reconfigure the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases, and, consequently, to impact human health. This study integrates co-evolutionary and system-oriented perspectives to investigate factors influencing the way emerging therapies evolve in their attempt to become established medical practices. We examined the case of the use of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cellbased therapies for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) disease. Cell therapy evolution is explored by considering their constitutive components, namely disease, biomedical technologies, and clinical practices, and observing the changes experienced by their underlying knowledge structures. We adopted a mixed methods approach that simultaneously uses publication, patent, and clinical trial data. Our results highlight the significance of the diversity of technological possibilities, the role of subjective issues in the selection of directions of search, the complementary nature between established and emerging therapies, and the tight product-process interdependencies. This study contributes to an understanding of the difficulties encountered during the emergence of new cell therapies, and the ways in which such difficulties can be circumvented to establish effective and safe cell-based clinical practices.