What's New?
What we do...
We are interested in development and employment of biomaterials and controlled delivery
systems in order to create synthetic environments for directing and analyzing cellular functions for applications in tissue regeneration and development, as well as diagnostic
assays.
How we do it...
Progenitor cells within a developing or regenerating tissue have the capacity to develop into functional replacement tissues; however, an environment that provides the signals to coordinate the sequence of events must be provided. Biomaterial design and development is combined with drug delivery technology to create three-dimensional culture environments that regulate cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions, and to provide a controlled release of protein and DNA. These systems are employed to examine the fundamental processes underlying normal and abnormal tissue formation, which can ultimately be employed to design synthetic systems to stimulate tissue formation for a variety of applications, such as ovarian follicle maturation, nerve regeneration, and islet cell transplantation. The DNA-delivery systems are also being developed for diagnostic systems to probe cellular processes.