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GFP- fibroblast cells on biomaterial scaffold
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Macrophages and functional blood vessels in hydrogel implant
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Major obstacles to effective tissue engineering or tissue regeneration are the lack of tailored biomaterials for implantation and the inability to vascularize and innervate the newly formed tissue. Recent advances in combinatorial synthesis have been successful in generating expansive biomaterial libraries, yet analysis of biomaterial-cell interactions rarely goes beyond measuring cell attachment and/or cell proliferation on the biomaterials. Moreover, these assays are typically undertaken with immortalized cell lines, such as NIH3T3 or Saos-2 cells, which complicates any effort to relate to experimental data with primary non-immortalized cells that are relevant to tissue repair or regeneration.
In order to achieve the goals of biomaterials for tissue engineering or tissue regeneration, it is necessary to move beyond the phenomenology of cell attachment/proliferation to a targeted pursuit of biomaterials that evoke specific cellular and genetic responses in relevant cell types. All cell actions (e.g., differentiation, proliferation, inflammation, apoptos) require genetic upregulation of target genes to carry out cellular functions, and many genes in these pathways are known to be affected by the interactions of the cells with their growth matrix substrate. We anticipate that an understanding of the trends of changes in gene up/down regulation with different polymers in a polymer library and different polymer libraries will guide our polymer chemists to design the optimal polymer for the desired application. See below for more information on specific projects currently in progress.
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