Craig Halberstadt Biography

Craig Halberstadt, Ph.D. is senior director of process development and engineering at Tengion in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

Dr. Halberstadt received a B.S. degree in microbiology, and an M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in bioengineering from the University of Michigan. Prior to his current position, he was Senior Research Scientist, Director of Tissue Engineering at the Carolinas Medical Center from December of 1996 until 2007.

Main Research Interest

Dr. Halberstadt's main interest is in cell transplantation, developing scale up technologies for tissue engineering and the in vivo reconstruction of new tissues. Dr. Halberstadt’s current focus is to help develop process scale-up strategies for an autologous human neo-bladder tissue.

Other research interests have included cell transplantation utilizing a co-culture of Sertoli cells (cells isolated from the testis that confers local immunoprotection) and pancreatic islets for the treatment of type I diabetes and cell biomaterial interactions and their use for tissue engineering applications.

Specifically Dr. Halberstadt's group has developed strategies for transplanting pre-adipocytes with a hydrogel biomaterial to create soft tissue analogues and in collaboration with Dr. Ken Gonsalves has examined the utility of micro- and nano-patterned structures on mammalian cell behavior.