News

7/15/2024 Adam Yang joins the Editorial Board of BMC Cardiovascular Disorders

6/27/2024 A collaborative review paper with Dr. Yi Hong's lab at UTA was published in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering: Transcriptomic Approaches to Cardiomyocyte–Biomaterial Interactions: A Review: This Review timely summarizes the use of transcriptomic approaches in cardiomyocyte-biomaterial relevant research to elucidate important cardiomyocyte-biomaterial interactions, the applications in cardiac tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, and cardiac disease modeling and drug testing.

6/17/2024 A collaborative research paper with Dr. Zhen Ma's lab at Syracuse University was published in Cell Reports Methods: Design optimization of geometrically confined cardiac organoids enabled by machine learning techniques


6/01/2024 Marcella Edwards, due to her outstanding research performance and determination, is hired as one of the undergraduate student researchers to be supported by the NIH R15 AREA grant.

5/27/2024 A collaborative research paper with Dr. Yi Hong's lab at UTA was published in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering: Reduced Graphene-Oxide-Doped Elastic Biodegradable Polyurethane Fibers for Cardiomyocyte Maturation: The conductive PU-rGO membranes provide a promising matrix for in vitro cardiomyocyte culture with promoted cell maturation/functionality and the potential for cardiac disease treatment.

5/07/2024 The Adam Yang team (Adam (Captain), Gautham, and Marcel) won the Complement Animal Research In Experimentation (Complement-ARIE) Challenge with Pulse of the Future: AI-human MEHC.


Multi-scaled engineered heart constructs (MEHCs) are revolutionary multiscale tissue cultures derived from human stem cells. At a microscopic level, these models can imitate intricate heart functions and structures, enabling groundbreaking studies of human heart physiology and diseases to complement animal models. With immense potential, the exploration of MEHCs promises to transform disease modeling and drug discovery.


At the center of this research is the novel software: Organalysis. Armed with formidable processing and analytical capabilities, this technology empowers researchers at the frontline of innovation by enriching MEHCs images and gleaning quantitative data about the function of the MEHCs. As such, Organalysis can transform biomedical research, opening the door to AI and ML-based techniques.


After developing this software, we then aimed to create a predictive model that detects cardiovascular disease patterns using data from MEHCs. Building off of the established framework for effective multiscale tissue modeling, this approach elevates in vitro research and enables customized predictive modeling tailored to patients. 


Overall, the integration of these technologies could catalyze pioneering discoveries that accelerate the clinical workflow from diagnosis to optimized, personalized treatment. 


https://commonfund.nih.gov/complementarie/challengewinnersummaries

4/28/2024 Congratulations to the senior student Isha Murugesan University of North Texas UNT Biomedical Engineering Department for winning the ACS Meeting in Miniature (DFW) Undergraduate Oral Presentations 3rd Place and UNT’s Honors College distinguished scholar for her excellence in research. Her work is also greatly supported by Dr. Yi Hong at UTA for applying HA hydrogel in cardiovascular disease modeling.

3/27/2024 An exciting and meaningful visit from Calhoun Middle School last week in Adam Yang lab. Thanks to the students (Marcel, Sai Tejas, Debosmita, Marcella, and Joel) in Yang lab for introducing and demonstrating our projects to over 70 middle school students in Denton ISD.

2/12/2024 Congratulations to Junior undergraduate, Marcella for winning the first prize ($1,200) in the Make-a-Thon event at UNT Discovery Park.

1/22/2024 A patent and corresponding preprint were filed and uploaded in bioRxiv by using Generative AI for Cardiac Organoid Florescence Generation through promising collaboration with Dr. Yunhe Feng from UNT CS.

1/20/2024 A new publication in the new year, another AI-organoid review paper with Dr. Zhen Ma and Dr. Mark Albert was published in Bioengineering & Translational Medicine, AI-organoid integrated systems for biomedical studies and applications. 

11/30/2023 A new co-corresponding review paper with Dr. Zhen Ma from Syracuse University was published in Medicine in Novel Technology and Devices, Organoid intelligence: Integration of organoid technology and artificial intelligence in the new era of in vitro models.

11/28/2023 A new collaborative paper with Dr. Chengyi Tu and Dr. Joe Wu was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, using engineering heart tissue and electrical stimulation systems to study Tachycardia-induced metabolic rewiring as a driver of contractile dysfunction.

11/13/2023 Adam served as one of the AHA pre/post doctoral fellowship committee.

11/01/2023 Adam served as a junior panelist in one of the NIH study sections in person.

10/27/2023 Congratulations to Graduate student, Arun Kumar Reddy Kandula, who won third place in the graduate student poster competition in the 2nd Workshop on Imaging and Data Science at the University of Texas Dallas https://imaging.utdallas.edu/workshop/, he presented his recent project on Generative AI for Cardiac Organoid Florescence Generation. Arun is also co-mentored by Dr. Yunhe Feng in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at UNT. 

10/5/2023 Excellent job, Sarah Velez, a graduate student in the lab, gave a presentation on hiPSC-CM disease modeling by using engineering tools at the 1st University Research Day at UNT. She is the only one from the College of Engineering as one of the student representatives. https://research.unt.edu/news/unt-research-and-scholarship-showcased-inaugural-event

9/29/2023 Thanks to Dr. Nandika D'Souza, Associate Dean of CENG at UNT, 's leadership, I was invited to attend the Tech Titan Gala 2023 in Plano TX as a fellow of the DEEN (Diversity and Excellence in Engineering Network) program, and we won the award of promoting education and diversity in the DFW area. It was a fun and exciting night!

9/15 to 10/15/2023 Celebrating HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH in Adam YANG lab!

9/07/2023 NEW PAPER published: Organalysis: Multifunctional Image Preprocessing and Analysis Software for Cardiac Organoid Studies, Congratulations to previous undergraduate students Pranav and Adheesh and current graduate students, Rahul and Angello! It is also a great collaboration with Dr. Zhen Ma at Syracuse University.

8/28/2023 Adam Yang lab was awarded a one-year project from the Harry S Moss Heart Trust for studying the relationship between cardiac fibrosis and arrhythmogenicity in a 3D bioprinted human in vitro model using hiPSC-CMs and cardiac fibroblasts.

8/19/2023 Adam Yang served as a judge for the poster competition of the 3rd Goldwater Symposium online. The interface was like an RPG game.

8/18/2023 Congratulations to Princess Amah, an undergraduate researcher for receiving the College of Engineering Scholarship for the academic year 2023 to 2024. 

8/16/2023 Congratulations to Isha, Gautham, Abigail, and Audrey for receiving Undergraduate Research Fellowships (URF) for the academic year 2023 to 2024. 

8/15/2023 Welcome undergraduate students in the program of DEEN (Diversity and Excellence in Engineering Network) program, NSF-HSI), Eduardo Ochoa and Marcella Edwards, Juniors in UNT BME.

6/21/2023 Congratulations to graduate student, Percyval Seddoh just passed his MS Thesis Defense! Great job!

5/29/2023 Congratulations to the following lovely students: 1. Nicholas Rogozinski, Excellent Master's Student (Male, GPA 4.0) in BMEN UNT; 2. Nicole Berry, Outstanding Teaching Assistant (Female, GPA 4.0) in BMEN UNT; 3. Princess Amah from Nigeria, Outstanding Freshman (Female, GPA 4.0) in BMEN UNT.

5/8/2023 New collaborative publication in Nature Cardiovascular Research: Statins improve endothelial function via suppression of epigenetic-driven EndMT, https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-023-00267-1

5/1/2023 Congratulations to our undergraduate student, Jathin Pranav Singaraju for being selected for the prestigious 71st Goldwater Scholarship for doing research in the lab in the past two years with medical possibilities (disease modeling and regenerative medicine) of machine learning in hPSC-derived cardiac organoids. https://news.unt.edu/news-releases/tams-student-earns-goldwater-scholarship-research-exploring-medical-possibilities

03/30/2023 Pranav, who presented on the Undergraduate Research Day 4.11 2023 at the Capitol, Austin, TX about his work on a new GUI for the image analysis of cardiac organoids. Pranav is selected (one of two) to represent UNT undergraduate research.

4/11/2023 Isha presented in the Engineering Day at UNT Discovery Park

03/21/2023 Congratulations to Nicholas Rogozinski, who passed his MS Thesis Defense in the title of MODELING OF HYPERTROPHIC CARDIOMYOPATHY USING GENOME-EDITED HUMAN INDUCED PLURIPOTENT STEM CELL-DERIVED CARDIOMYOCYTES WITH STATIC MECHANICAL STIMULATION. Nick has been one of the most valuable members of the lab with one published paper, several conference abstracts, and two more papers in preparation to be submitted soon. Congratulations, Nick!

03/01/2023 Adam Yang was awarded the UNT Research Seed Grant for studying left-ventricular non-compaction (LVNC) via Notch1 signaling using hPSC-derived cardiac organoids and transgenic zebrafish model through collaboration with Dr. Warren Burggren in Biological Science. The seed grant allows an initial collaboration to generate preliminary data for external funding applications in the near future. Stay tuned!

01/28/2023 Congratulations to the undergraduate researcher (TAMS student) in the lab, Gautham Mohanraj, who won the 3rd place at the TAMS Fair Science Competition for working on the ML and cardiac arrhythmia classification and prediction using the hiPSC-CM model.

01/24/2023 Adam Yang served as one of the Panelists to UNT DC Fellows for a panel workshop on "How to Find Funding. Thanks Aaron's invitation with Katie's help!

12/20/2022 Congratulations to our undergraduate student (TAMS), Jathin Pranav Singaraju for being selected as one of two students representing UNT to present a poster at the Hill Conference at Capitol Hill in Austin Texas next February about his research in the lab: Multifunctional, Consolidated, and Simplified Image Preprocessing and Analysis Software for Organoid Studies.

11/1/2022 Huaxiao Adam Yang received a three-year NIH R15 grant to study the congenital heart defect with Notch1 mutation by using human-induced stem cell-derived vascularized cardiac organoids and multi-omics through collaboration with Dr. Lin Xu at UTSW Pediatrics and Dr. Ming-Tao Zhao at Nationwide Children's Hospital.

10/26 to 10/30/2022 Huaxiao Adam Yang as one of the UNT representatives attended the 2022 NDISTEM SACNAS meeting (https://www.sacnas.org/2022-sacnas-ndistem-agenda-at-a-glance) in San Juan PR with Angello, Dana, Molly, Lee, vice president of UNT Dr. Padilla and President of UNT Dr. Smatresk.

10/20/2022 Huaxiao Adam Yang as the invited speaker at the University of Texas at Dallas Department of Chemistry to give a seminar talk: "Modeling Cardiovascular Development and Disease with Human Pluripotent Stem Cells (hPSC) and Tissue Engineering" Thank you so much for Dr. Miheala Stefan and Dr. Jie Zheng's invitation.

10/16/2022 to 10/18/2022 Huaxiao Adam Yang was invited to be one of the speakers in the biannual ASMB Fibroblast Workshop 2022 at the University of Virginia Charlottesville and give a talk about "Fibroblasts in Cardiac Engineered Constructs for Regenerative Medicine" Thanks for the organizers, Dr. Merry Lindsey and Dr. Tom Barker. It was an excellent opportunity to know the most current research progress from the top researchers in fibroblasts, ECM, and relevant disease and treatment.

10/12/2022 to 10/15/2022 BMES Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX. It was a very memorable experience with the students (4 first conference attendees) working in the lab on two poster presentations by Angello, Nick, Rahul, and Percyval: 1) T-tubule Formation and Calcium Transient Maturation on Human iPSC-derived Cardiac Microfibers; 2) Engineering Cardiac Organoid Vascularization via Shear Stress and Vascular-promoting Growth Factors. I am glad I am the one leading them into the world of biomedical engineering and cardiac tissue engineering. I also met so many old and new friends in the field of BME.

09/14/2022 UNT BMEN Open house 2022 in Adam Yang lab

09/14/2022 Congratulations to one of our undergraduate students, Jathin Pranav Singaraju for the TAMS named scholarship!

08/15/2022 Congratulations to one of our undergraduate students, Alexia Gutierrez "Lexi" for the IME Becas / HACEMOS Dallas 2022 Award!

07/30/2022 New corresponding author paper published in ACS Appl Mater Interfaces about "Contractility and Calcium Transient Maturation in the Human iPSC-Derived Cardiac Microfibers"

 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.2c07326, thanks to students and collaborators' tremendous efforts and help!

07/18/2022 Congratulations to the hardworking undergraduate students in the lab, Sudhiksha Maramraju, Isha Murugesan, Jathin Pranav Singaraju, Aishwarya Balaji, and Shreema Vijayakumar  for getting the UNT Undergraduate Research Fellowships

07/10/2022 The over 7-year effort has been updated in our recent BioRxiv preprint: Micropatterned Organoids Enable Modeling of the Earliest Stages of Human Cardiac Vascularization with Oscar Abilez, Joseph Wu, and my Ph.D. student Rahul Bhoi. Good luck with the peer review!

06/01/2022 A provisional application for the patent (No. 63/314,958) of "Creation of Vascularized Biological Structures" with Drs. Oscar Abilez and Joseph Wu since Feb 2022.

05/25/2022 Angello was selected for the NIH T32 G-RISE program for supporting his Ph.D. research and education at UNT BME for the next three years. Good job!

05/12/2022 Congratulations to Dovile and Angello for being awarded as outstanding MS thesis students at UNT BME, and also to Dovile for outstanding TA at UNT BME.

04/25/2022 Two collaborative papers about 3D cardiac tissue and cardiac electrophysiological measurement were accepted to be published in ACS Nano and Nature Communications, respectively

04/1/2022 Congratulations to Angello Huerta Gomez for being selected as one of the College of Engineering outstanding graduating Master's students

03/30/2022 Congratulations to Nick, Angello, and Rahul for being publishing a review paper in iScience of "Current Methods for Fabricating 3D Cardiac Engineered Constructs" through collaboration with Dr. Moo-Yeal Lee. We also thanks Drs. Ali Khademhosseini, Utkan Demirci, and Vahid Serpooshan for the invitation.

03/21/2022 Congratulations to Dovile, who just passed her Master's Thesis Defense in the title of "Modeling hypertrophic cardiomyopathy using genome-edited hiPSC-CMs in response to mechanotransduction." The First student with a Thesis to be graduated, and Dovile will join the Bio-Techne in Boston as a Research Associate. 

02/4/2022 Congratulations to the undergraduate researchers in the lab, Sudhiksha and Pranav, who won the 1st place at the TAMS Fair Science Competition for working on the AI and cardiac organoid system.

01/11/2022 CSE Projects Open house by Dr. Mark Albert, two undergraduate students in the Yang lab, Adheesh and Pranav, did very interactive presentations of project 1: Organoid Image Colorization with Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs); 2: Cardiac Organoid cell area prediction with Machine Learning.

12/14/2021 Please check out our newest special issue in Cells (IF= 6.6) of Single Cell Omics: Recent Advances and Application in Cellular Pathology. You are welcome to submit your original research articles, reviews, or mini-reviews, opinions, hypotheses, or reports to this special issue before the deadline 9/15/2022. This special issue is co-edited by Dr. Mingtao Zhao, Dr. Qiwei Li, Dr. Lin Xu, and myself. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/cells/special_issues/single_cell_omics

10/24/2021 Our recent review paper about Notch signaling by Bioengineering system modeling was selected as a cover page  article in JCDD: https://www.mdpi.com/2308-3425/8/10?utm_campaign=releaseissue_jcddutm_medium=emailutm_source=releaseissueutm_term=coverlink

09/27/2021 Congratulations to Angello Huerta Gomez and Sanika Joshi for their recent review paper just accepted in the Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease on Bioengineering systems for modulating Notch signaling in cardiovascular development, disease, and regeneration. https://www.mdpi.com/2308-3425/8/10/125

09/02/2021 Congrats Sanika Joshi, Adheesh Kadiresan, Anirudh Kaza, and Sudhiksha Maramraju for receiving the UNT Undergraduate Research Fellowship!

07/13/2021 Please consider submitting your method research to the Method Collection on JoVE on the topic of Multiscale cardiovascular tissue engineering for disease modeling and regenerative medicine, https://www.jove.com/methods-collections/1164.

This newest Method Collection on JoVE is co-edited by Zhen Ma (Syracuse U), Jun Liao (UTA), and Huaxiao Adam Yang (UNT).

Multiscale tissue engineering has been widely applied in modeling and treating cardiovascular diseases, such as nano-/micro- vesicles for drug delivery in the cardiovascular system, stem cell therapy for cardiovascular repair and regeneration,  2D cardiomyocyte micropatterning for modulating the cardiac structure and function, 3D engineered heart tissue for modeling the familial cardiomyopathies and treating myocardial infarction as a cardiac patch for cardiac regeneration, organ-on-chip for recapitulating the pathophysiological microenvironment in the cardiovascular system, decellularized cardiovascular constructs for cardiovascular repair, cardiovascular 3D culture and organoid for disease modeling, etc.

To have a better and broader adaption and utilization of those multiscale cardiovascular tissue engineering technologies in more research and translational labs, there is a pressing need in reporting and sharing the video-based experimental protocols using those technologies.

The scope of this Collection on multiscale cardiovascular tissue engineering methods includes but is not limited to the below-specified areas

06/25/2021 UNT AI Summer Camp, thanks to Dr. Mark Albert for such a wonderful REU program.

https://ai.unt.edu/unt-ai-summer-research-program

The 2021 UNT AI Summer Research Program has brought together 21 MS students and 27 undergraduates engaging in 15 research projects. Their efforts were supported by a team of 2 program coordinators, 10 graduate advisors, and 9 faculty advisors. 

The undergraduate (Joonghyun Kim (Brian), Sudhiksha Maramraju, Adheesh Kadiresan, Anirudh Kaza, and Vignesh Sanagala) and graduate students (Rahul Kumar Bhoi) working in the lab contributed two projects on:

1) Automated Cardiac Organoid Cell Area Measurement and Prediction from Experimental Condition with Machine Learning; 

2) Cardiac organoid Cell Composition Discrimination in Images with Machine Learning.

05/29/2021 The editorial contributed by Sanika Joshi (TAMS student), Won Hee Lee, Pu Chen, Vahid Serpooshan, and Huaxiao Adam Yang* was accepted by Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine

3D Cell Culture Systems for Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering: In Vitro Modelling and In Vivo Regenerative Therapies

05/06/2021 Congratulations to Dovile Strimaityte for winning the Oscar Garcia Award!

https://engineering.unt.edu/webforms/oscar-garcia-academic-and-service-scholarship

04/22/2021 Congratulations to both Vignesh and Sanika for awarding TAMS  Summer Scholarship!

04/19/2021 Please join us BEIS 2021 (Biomedical Engineering and Instrumentation Summit) from April 19 to 21 virtually.

4/16/2021 Beating cells from hiPSCs

CH123-CM-EC-SMC-Gr-Or-Bl-Z41-RGB-Hyperstack-SwapZtoT-01.avi

03/30/2021 Please join us BEIS 2021 (Biomedical Engineering and Instrumentation Summit) from April 19 to 21 virtually. I will moderate the meeting with the convening chair Dr. Anthony Guiseppi-Elie. Please check the full list of keynote and featured speakers from MIT, Cornell, Northwestern, Boston U, Northeastern, Emory, and more: https://biomedical.unitedscientificgroup.org/ and meeting program: https://biomedical.unitedscientificgroup.org/pdfs/BEIS-2021_Program.pdf 

02/27/2021 to 02/28/2021 Adam Yang was excited to serve as one of the judges in the competition of biomedical device design, Make-a-thon. I have seen the hard-working, team-working, and creativity of our next-generation biomedical engineers.

02/01/2021 Adam Yang will serve as the BMEN Representative on Biosafety Committee at UNT.

01/30/2020 Justin Howard joined the lab as a senior undergraduate student at UNT BME, welcome!

01/23/2021 Cell culture in place at Adam Yang lab! Photo credit to Rahul.

1/8/2021 Adam Yang was selected as a UNT Washington DC Faculty Fellow for FY2021

01/04/2021 Happy New Year 2021! Everyone in the Adam Yang lab is receiving a specially designed sweater for the new semester!

11/23/2020 Apuleyo Yanez joined the lab as a Master student, welcome!

11/17/2020 Adam Yang lab received the support from UNT Research Seed Grant (RSG) to study the drug toxicity induced cardiovascular maldevelopment and dysfunction using human induced pluripotent cells, micropatterning, 3D culture, and machine learning through the collaborations of Prof. Mark Albert (UNT CS) and Prof. Johnathan Tune (UNTHSC). The goal of this UNT RSG is to promote the preliminary findings in the junior faculty's labs for gaining external sponsored project supports.

11/05/2020 Thanks Diane for choosing our image for the cover page in your presentation in the BioTek User Group Meeting

10/30/2020 Sanika Joshi joined the lab as a TAMS student, welcome!

10/29/2020 Adam Yang was the moderator and also one of the Featured Speakers at Second Edition Bioelectronics, Biosensors and Biochips Virtual Meeting (C3B-20-II), https://bioengineermeeting.org/c3b-2/ [Free registration] Thank you for your invitation, Dr. Anthony Guiseppi-Elie and Mr. Bijay P.

10/28/2020 New group selfie in Zoom!

10/23/2020 Mason Forshage joined the lab as a Master student, welcome!

10/21/2020 Vignesh Sanagala joined the lab as a TAMS student, welcome!

10/16/2020 Learning from 3D Engineered Heart Tissue

https://med.stanford.edu/cvi/mission/news_center/articles_announcements/learning-from-3d-engineered-heart-tissue.html

10/12/2020 Connor Grandorf joined the lab as a Master student, welcome!

10/05/2020 Dovile Strimaityte joined the lab as a Master student, welcome!

10/02/2020 Our new paper about comparison between 2D culture and 3D engineered heart tissue (EHT) of NHP iPSC-CMs in hypoxia and transcriptome profiling (Stanford CVI and UNT BME) is online (pre-proofreading) https://academic.oup.com/cardiovascres/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/cvr/cvaa281

9/17/2020 Call for submission, Frontiers in Cardiovascular medicine. 

https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/12897/3d-cell-culture-systems-for-cardiovascular-tissue-engineering-in-vitro-modelling-and-in-vivo-regener

This topic aims to highlight that the convergence between 3D culture and cutting-edge bioengineering technologies, such as nano-biomaterials, 3D (bio)printing, genome editing, bioimaging, next-generation omics and others will create more opportunities of cardiovascular studies to uncover molecular mechanisms of cardiovascular development and diseases,and develop novel therapies.

9/16/2020 Honorable mention of Adam Yang and Oscar Abilez's imaging work with Cytation5 at BioTek Imaging Perspectives 2020

https://www.biotek.com/contests/imaging-perspectives.html

9/03/2020 First lab meeting with mask and social distancing at K160 Discovery Park

9/03/2020 Sasha Falaja joined the lab as a Master student, welcome!

8/28/2020 Angello Huerta Gomez joined the lab as a Master student, welcome!

8/28/2020 RahulKumar Bhoi joined the lab as a PhD student, welcome!

8/24/2020 Adam Yang lab @UNT BME opened