In the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine there is significant unmet need for critically-sized, fully degradable biomaterial scaffold systems with tunable properties for optimizing tissue formation in vitro and tissue regeneration in vivo. To address this need, we have developed a silk-based scaffold platform that has tunable material properties, including localized and bioac...

The performance of biomaterials-based therapies can be hindered by complications associated with surgical implant, motivating the development of materials systems that allow minimally invasive introduction into the host. In this study, we created cell-adhesive and degradable gelatin scaffolds that could be injected through a conventional needle while maintaining a predefined geometry and archit...

Synthetic hydrogel scaffolds that can be used as culture systems that mimic the natural stem cell niche are of increased importance for stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. These artificial niches can be utilized to control the stem cell fate and will have potential applications for expanding/differentiating stem cells in vitro, delivering stem cells in vivo, as well as making tissue co...

The in vitro cytocompatibility of silicate (Laponite clay) cross-linked poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) nanocomposite films using MC3T3-E1 mouse preosteoblast cells was investigated while cell adhesion, spreading, proliferation and mineralization were assessed as a function of film composition. By combining the advantageous characteristics of PEO polymer (hydrophilic, prevents protein and cell adhes...

Introduction: Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) have been the focus of considerable attention as a material with extraordinary mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties[1]. Due of these properties SWNT have been proposed for use in a number of materials and biointerface applications such as nanoelectronics, biosensors, materials and tissue engineering applications including, neural, bo...

Analyte-responsive smart polymeric materials are of great interest and have been actively investigated in the field of regenerative medicine. Phenylboronate containing copolymers form gels with polyols under alkaline conditions. Monosaccharides, by virtue of their higher affinity towards boronate, can displace polyols and solubilize such gels. In the present study, we investigate the possibilit...

Effective cell seeding throughout the tissue scaffold often determines the success of tissue-engineering products, although most current methods focus on determining the total number, not the distribution, of the cells associated with tissue-engineering constructs. The purpose of this investigation was to establish a quick, convenient, and efficient method to quantify cell survival, distributio...

Statement of Purpose: Corneal blindness deprives 10 million people worldwide of their sight. Current treatments for corneal blindness mainly rely on implants that replace the injured tissue and have been clinically unsuccessful thus far. The goal of this project is to prevent corneal blindness by developing clinically-viable scaffolds that promote orderly corneal wound healing using biochemical...

Tissue-engineered constructs, at the interface of material science, biology, engineering, and medicine, have the capacity to improve outcomes for cardiac patients by providing living cells and degradable biomaterials that can regenerate the native myocardium. With an ultimate goal of both delivering cells and providing mechanical support to the healing heart, we designed three-dimensional (3D) ...