Fabrication of Organoid and Complex μ (micro/nano)-scale biomimetic Surfaces Laboratory

Our lab’s long-term research goal is to engineer in vitro models of different tissues including cancer, cardiac, liver and brain in an effort to understand the role of the tissue microenvironment (physical attributes, cell-cell communication, and ligand density) on the underlying biology of healthy and diseased tissues. These platforms provide an ideal model to delineate the critical but unexplored areas of tissue microenvironment in which the cells reside. We also are developing clinically translatable nano-size liposome based drug delivery systems for encapsulating drugs ranging from high molecular weight proteins to small nucleic acids including miRNA, which regulates pathways important for disease progression and control.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

The two main problems that our lab is aiming to address are:

1)Tissue microenvironment including cell-cell interaction, physical and biochemical changes in healthy and diseased tissues have been well characterized in clinical studies. However, there is a huge void in our understanding of the underlying molecular changes that exist at the cellular level. One of the main reasons is the complexity of the animal models and lack of appropriate in vitro models to address these questions.

2)Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars in order to identify the so-called “blockbuster” drug in terms of both treatment efficiency and economic payback to the company. Several drugs identified as strong candidates are dropped due to lack of efficient and target delivery systems.

PRIMARY  LIVER CELLS

PRIMARY  BRAIN CELLS

ANIMAL MODELS- C. elegans

C. elegans treated with fluorescent tagged TiO2 NPs (A) control (B) Anatase (C) Rutile (D) P25. Arrows indicates head.