| Biomaterials |
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We design advanced biomaterials for tissue engineering as well as protein, gene, and cell therapies.
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Tissue Engineering
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Bony tissue engineered from a bone marrow stromal cell-hydrogel construct (Kong et al, Biomacromolecules 2004). |
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Cartilage tissue engineered from a chondrocyte-hydrogel construct (Kong et al, Advanced Materials, 2004). |
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| Cell-ECM Interactions |
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Gene delivery can be regulated by mechanical and chemical properties of synthetic extracellular matrix. Increasing the stiffness of the cell adhesion matrix enhances a cell's ability to uptake genes, as illustrated with fluorescent images of an exogenous pDNA complex taken up by cells (Kong et al, Nature Materials 2005). |
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Increasing the total number of cell adhesion oligopeptides enhances the cell's ability to uptake genes, as illustrated with fluorescent images of an exogenous pDNA complex taken up by cells (Kong et al, Nano Letters 2007). |
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| Stem Cell Niches |
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Spermatogonial stem cells cultured in 3D synthetic stem cell niches examined with immunocytochemistry (Chu et al, Tissue Engineering 2008). |
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| FRET |
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Reorganization of cell adhesion cues in engineered extracellular matrices imaged using a fluorescent resonance energy transfer (FRET) technique. Due to FRET, the region at which cell adhesion molecules are clustered shows a bright red emission from acceptors (Kong et al, PNAS 2005). This FRET-based imaging technique was used to understand the critical role of the stiffness of cell adhesion matrices for regulating cellular phenotypes. |
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Bonds between cellular receptors and adhesion ligands in a cell adhesion matrix are imaged using FRET. The cell membrane was stained with fluorescent donors (green), and the adhesion ligands were linked with fluorescent acceptors (red). The left photomicrograph shows cells in an unmodified hydrogel. The right photomicrograph shows cells in a hydrogel modified with fluorescent cell adhesion oligopeptides. The decrease in the intensity of green emission verifies the FRET between cells and cell adhesion oligopeptides (Kong et al, PNAS 2006). This technology was used to measure the number of integrin-ligand bonds for cells encapsulated in a 3D synthetic extracellular matrix. |
