Research

Biomaterials

Biomaterials are critical components of biomedical devices and products. A novel biomaterial may create new fields of study and opportunities to tackle unmet clinical problems. Biodegradable polymers have been long recognized for their uses in many biomedical applications. Our laboratories have special interest in establishing methodologies for developing biodegradable polymers for tissue engineering, drug delivery, and cellular/tissue bioimaging applications.

We are currently developing the next generation of biodegradable elastic polymers, crosslinked urethane-doped polyester networks (CUPEs). CUPEs show a wide control on their mechanical properties, degradation rates and functionalities. CUPE scaffolds are soft elastic but strong biodegradable scaffolds, which has been a challenge in the filed of biodegradable scaffold design. CUPEs should serve as ideal candidates for engineering elastic tissue such as blood vessel, ligament, tendon, and cardiac tissue.

We have recently made breakthroughs in developing biodegradable photoluminescent polymers (BPLPs). Unlike traditional non-degradable aromatic fluorescent polymers used in the lighting industry, BPLPs are aliphatic degradable oligomers synthesized by biocompatible monomers via a very simple and cost-effective polycondensation reaction. These polymers offer advantages over the traditional fluorescent organic dyes, inorganic quantum dots, and non-degradable fluorescent polymers in terms of their excellent cytocompatibility, controlled degradability and mechanical properties, and stable but tunable photoluminescent properties. BPLPs can also be further synthesized into crosslinked polymers that possess soft and elastic mechanical properties suitable for tissue engineering applications. These exciting findings lead us further to developing and understanding the unique BPLPs and exploring their potential huge opportunities in biological labeling, cellular/tissue/scaffold bioimaging, tissue engineering and drug delivery.

(CLICK TO SEE COLOR (Fluorescence) SHOW: Tensile mechanical tests on CUBPLP elastomeric strip)

We have patented new platform biomaterials featuring dual crosslinking mechanism, referred to as PAMCs. PAMCs can be used as injectable biomaterials for tissue engineering, drug delivery and wound healing applications. We are currently exploring the use of PAMCs for bone tissue engineering and wound healing applications.

The development of the above new biomaterials builds up a solid foundation for our laboratories toward tackling down unmet scientific and clinical problems.

Tissue Engineering Stragegy

Finding suitable biomaterials and tissue engineering strategies are challenging the success of tissue engineering. In addition to our efforts on developing novel biomaterials for tissue engineering applications, we are developing a novel tissue engineering strategy for tissue construction, which we refer to as "Scaffold-Sheet Tissue Engineering". The soft and elastic scaffold sheets offer 3-D environment for cells to attach, grow, and differentiate; excellent mechanical properties for handling or cell-training in a bioreactor after cell seeding; and great convenience for tissue assembling. We are actively involving the scaffold-sheet tissue engineering strategy for cardiovascular and ligament tissue engineering.

The other tissue engineering related projects:

1) citrate-based osteoinductive orthopedic biomaterials for bone tissue engineering.

2) injectable biomaterials to treat osteonecrosis.

3) biomaterials-mediated stem cell differentiation.

Medical devices

We are developing biodegradable radiopaque coronary artery stents to treat atherosclerosis and gastrointestinal (GI) stents to treat endoluminal strictures in gastroenterology .

We are working on injection assisted endoscopic mucosal resection to treat GI cancers.

We are also working on bioadhesives to wound closing and drug delivery.

Positions