Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine

The group is focused on developing strategies for achieving ragio-specific control on cell adhesion and differentiation for tissue engineering.

Thrust areas for tissue engineering are:

1. Scaffolds for tissue engineering

We are interested in understanding material properties that can effect stem cell differentiation, cellular attachment and cell growth. The major challenges which we are addressing are:

• To chemically modify materials for better adhesion, where spatial control over cell adhesion can be achieved.
• To develop new approaches to deliver multiple active bio molecules and modulate release profiles from a single delivery system.
• To develop a new material that can assembled into higher order and respond to stimuli.

Further, fabricating a 3D scaffold giving a better control mimicking the actual tissue properties is a challenge due to several constraints. Our research focuses on mimicking the natural process of tissue formation by encapsulating cells in an optimized 3D printed construct which maintains the required balance between biomechanics and tissue regeneration.

2. Substrate cell interactions for tissue engineering

The cells in our body are highly sensitive to the geometrical cues which are imposed by the spatial arrangement of other cells and ECM. This microenvironment arrangement imposes certain boundary conditions to the cells which ultimately decides the fate of the cell. However, these boundary conditions are generally absent in the classic 2-D culture in which the cells adhere to a uniform substrate. In our lab, we are using capillary force lithography to pattern cells in different geometries to study the cell-cell and cell-ECM interactions. This fundamental understanding of how cells assemble onto a substrate will enable development of functional tissues in-vitro and accelerate the field of tissue engineering.

3. Wound healing

We are interested in manipulating biological processes involved in wound healing and developing materials that can regulate them. Neutrophils are prominent immune cells present on wound to defend against infection by secreting neutrophil extracellular traps (NETosis process). While these traps might help in killing and controlling pathogens, the diabetic microenvironment primes neutrophils for NETosis and could be one of the reasons for poor healing of diabetic wounds. Thus, in our lab we are modulating Neutrophil Extracellular Traps by inhibiting PAD4 enzyme, a prerequisite for this process, thereby facilitating wound healing.