Research

Neural regeneration within the central nervous system (CNS) is a critical unmet challenge as CNS disorders continue to be the leading cause of disability nationwide. Biomaterials present innovative therapeutic approaches for controlled drug delivery and tissue engineering strategies. Engineers can provide a unique perspective in the design and development of materials for human health. Our research is an innovative combination of in vitro systems and future in vivo applications of biomaterial-stem cell interactions drawing on aspects of engineering, stem cell biology, and neuroscience with a unifying theme of functional neural tissue engineering. Our multidisciplinary lab focuses on biomaterial and drug delivery applications for neurodegenerative diseases and injuries of the CNS and investigate material effects on stem cell behaviors such as survival, proliferation, morphology, differentiation, and neural tissue function.

A major challenge in neural tissue engineering and regenerative medicine is one of tissue construction: what biomaterial, in terms of chemical composition and physical properties, might best mimic the native extracellular matrix (ECM) that houses neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, lineage-restricted progenitor cells, multipotent neural stem cells (NSCs), microglia, and other cells? We design, computationally simulate, synthesize, and experimentally characterize various hydrogel-forming biomaterials to understand and predict structure and function. The properties of any material stem from the three-dimensional (3D) structures and dynamics of its molecular constituents—from the level of individual molecules to their higher–order assembly into matrices. These structural and dynamical properties, in turn, are deeply linked to the patterns of intra- and inter-molecular interactions that are thermodynamically accessible, and substantially populated, under a given set of experimental conditions. We study the effects of critical features like molecular structure (ie: peptide sequence), solvent and ion content, and processing conditions on molecular assembly and crosslinking mechanisms through combinations of simulation and experiment.

A major challenge in neural tissue engineering and regenerative medicine is one of tissue construction: what biomaterial, in terms of chemical composition and physical properties, might best mimic the native extracellular matrix (ECM) that houses neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, lineage-restricted progenitor cells, multipotent neural stem cells (NSCs), microglia, and other cells? We design, computationally simulate, synthesize, and experimentally characterize various hydrogel-forming biomaterials to understand and predict structure and function. The properties of any material stem from the three-dimensional (3D) structures and dynamics of its molecular constituents—from the level of individual molecules to their higher–order assembly into matrices. These structural and dynamical properties, in turn, are deeply linked to the patterns of intra- and inter-molecular interactions that are thermodynamically accessible, and substantially populated, under a given set of experimental conditions. We study the effects of critical features like molecular structure (ie: peptide sequence), solvent and ion content, and processing conditions on molecular assembly and crosslinking mechanisms through combinations of simulation and experiment.