Designing, engineering and manufacturing biomaterials for regenerative medicine, cancer therapy, biomedical device functionalization, mechanobiology, tissue engineering and more.
Mulltifaceted design of tissue adhesives
I'm working with clinicians, pathologists, chemists and physicists to design next-generation tissue adhesives for tissue repair and healthcare monitoring.
Bioinspired design for biomedical device functionalization
I'm developing various medical devices (such as surgical sutures) and coating technologies for enhanced human-machine interface and better human health.
Mechanobiology
Mechanobiological regulation of placental trophoblast fusion. The placental syncytiotrophoblast is a giant multinucleated cell that forms a tree-like structure and regulates transport between mother and baby during development. It is maintained throughout pregnancy by continuous fusion of trophoblast cells, and disruptions in fusion are associated with considerable adverse health effects including diseases such as preeclampsia. Developing predictive control over cell fusion in culture models is hence of critical importance in placental drug discovery and transport studies, but this can currently be only partially achieved with biochemical factors. We're investigating whether biophysical signals associated with budding morphogenesis during development of the placental villous tree and the mechanical microenvironment (e.g. ECM rigidity ) of healthy/diseased tissue can synergistically direct and enhance trophoblast fusion. We use biomimetic micropatterned adhesive surfaces to manipulate physical stresses in engineered microtissues and demonstrate that biomimetic geometries simulating budding robustly enhance fusion and alter spatial patterns of synthesis of pregnancy-related hormones. These findings indicate that biophysical signals play a previously unrecognized and significant role in regulating placental fusion and function, in synergy with established soluble signals. More broadly, our studies demonstrate that biomimetic strategies focusing on tissue mechanics can be important approaches to design, build, and test placental tissue cultures for future studies of pregnancy-related drug safety, efficacy, and discovery.
