The Institute of Tissue Regeneration Engineering (ITREN) held its 2026 Summer Conference and Workshop from 14 to 16 June at High1 Resort in Jeongseon, Gangwon-do, jointly organized with the Mechanobiology Dental Medicine Research Center (MRC).
Over three days, faculty members and graduate students presented current research across mechanobiology, tumor microenvironments, immune signaling and tissue regeneration. The program also included a session on research methodology, followed by a field excursion in the Jeongseon area.
Glioblastoma
A growing brain tumor does more than send chemical signals to the immune cells around it. It also reshapes the physical space those cells move through. This session looked at how mechanical cues from the tumor matrix combine with tumor-derived molecular signals to steer the behavior of microglia, and what that combination means for how a tumor is policed from within.
Atopic dermatitis
Inflamed skin becomes measurably stiffer, and that stiffening is not only a symptom. The talk examined how changes in extracellular matrix stiffness feed into mast cell activation and mechanosignaling, treating the physical state of the tissue as an active contributor to the atopic dermatitis microenvironment rather than a by-product of it.
Research practice
A step back from results to method. Good experiments answer what happened; mechanistic thinking asks why, how, and under which conditions the answer holds. Drawn from the speaker's own doctoral work, the session traced how a set of observations turns into an explanation, and where that transition most often goes wrong.
Outside the sessions, along the Jeongseon river.
ITREN members at the institute in Cheonan.