"Scaffolds for Tissue Regeneration: Fabrication and Cell Interactions"
Research in our laboratory seeks to understand how cells interact with and respond to engineered tissue scaffolds and how this impacts tissue repair and regeneration. This work is poised at the interface of nanotechnology, materials engineering, and the life sciences. Some of the key questions of interest include how cells sense mechanical information in their local environment and integrate this information with biochemical signals, and how to engineer cells and their ECM to create desired functional outputs. Our approach utilizes nanofabrication and additive manufacturing to develop multifunctional tissue scaffolds with well-defined surface chemistry and morphology, which can impart developmental cues to the cell. Recent progress on design and fabrication of three-dimensional microenvironments for bone, cartilage and renal tissue regeneration will be discussed.