News

10/3/2025 - Adam Yang lab presented at the UNT Research Day, Angello, Joel, Marcel, Marcella, Debo, Iris (UG), Ishika, Shreyes (UG), excellent job! 

9/9/2025 - 9/12/2025 Adam Yang gave two invited talks on hPSC-derived organoid vascularization and intelligence at Sungkyunkwan University School of Pharmacy in Suwon and the Korean Society for Biomaterials (KSBM) Annual Meeting in Busan. Thank you so much for Dr. Soah Lee's kind invitation from SKKU and for the program director, Dr. Won Jong Kim from POSTECH, President of KSBM Dr. Jae Hyup Lee from SNU, and all the researchers/professors I met in Korea. This amazing trip provides me with rare opportunities to communicate and learn from the outstanding research and top-notch researchers in Korea in the fields of bioengineering and biomaterials.

8/28/2025 Sincerely appreciate the Harry S. Moss Heart BOA Trust for the continuous support of our study on Early Diagnosis of Cardiac Arrhythmia-associated Heart Failure with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy since 2023.

8/14/2025 Congratulations to Marcel El-Mokahal for passing his Ph.D. qualifying exam to become the second Ph.D. candidate in Adam Yang's lab. Good job, Marcel!

8/2/2025 It was such an honor to be on the Stanford CVI quarterly newsletter: https://stanfordmedicine.app.box.com/s/wg2zmm8dokwxjh2n6udufs0v9jfzgwcx

6/5/2025 Finally, our work was published in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu9375

Gastruloids enable modeling of the earliest stages of human cardiac and hepatic vascularization

Thank you so much, my previous mentor, Dr. Joseph C. Wu, for his continuous support and guidance on this project. It was a long (~8 years) but worthy journey with all the co-authors on this paper to complete this challenge of vascularizing the cardiac and liver organoids based on the early stage of physiological vasculogenesis and angiogenesis.

We have been testing over 34 conditions of small molecules and growth factors to achieve and optimize the best outcome of cardiac and hepatic vascularization using a unique genetically encoded triple fluorescence reporter hPSC line and micropatterning techniques in high throughput and accuracy. We have demonstrated the established protocol with high reproducibility by single-cell RNA-seq analysis and multiple hiPSC lines validation. We have seen nearly all cell populations in the heart, including cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, fibroblasts, pericytes, etc, and those cells formed expected but astonishing networks, including myocardium-like structure and lumenized vasculature upon 12-16 days direct differentiation. We can also observe and measure cardiophysiological-like functions of contractions, calcium transients, and action potentials. More importantly, the molecular pathways (e.g., Notch, BMP, etc.) of early cardiovascular development were also found to play essential roles in the vascularized cardiac organoids.

Since I joined the University of North Texas in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, my lab has continued to contribute to this and relevant projects with my two outstanding Ph.D. students, Angello Huerta Gomez and Marcel El-Mokahal, who have done excellent experiments during the submission and revision process of this paper.

In the past five years, my lab has focused on establishing an in vitro human heart model as one of the new alternative methods (NAMs) using vascularized cardiac organoids via integration of an in silico system, specifically artificial intelligence and various bioengineered systems for disease modeling and regenerative medicine.

I am very excited to contribute to this field with my students to establish a better and closer in vitro human heart model with hPSC-derived vascularized cardiac organoids for various biomedical applications.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNT for its endless support, and my current funding support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the NHLBI – Heart Research & Education.

5/16/2025 Co-authored paper with Dr. Zhen Ma at Syracuse University was published in Advanced Healthcare Materials: Mechanically and Chemically Defined PEG Hydrogels Improve Reproducibility in Human Cardioid Development

4/12/2025 We have contributed a book chapter to the book edited by Dr. June Liao and Dr. Wong, J. Yang, Integration and Bridging of Multiscale Bioengineering Designs and Tissue Biomechanics. Springer Nature

Nicholas Rogozinski, Sarah Velez, Yi Hong, Huaxiao Yang (2025). Non-obstructive Methods to Detect Sarcomere Remodeling of Live In Vitro Cardiomyocytes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-81743-4_18, Online ISBN, 978-3-031-81743-4

In this chapter, we introduced the current state-of-the-art sarcomere imaging techniques, focusing on the advantages and challenges of imaging live CMs in non-invasive ways for studying sarcomere remodeling in various in vitro culture models. We further highlighted the applications of sarcomere remodeling in disease modeling of cardiac diseases and developing novel therapeutics. 

1/29/2025 Our collaborative paper with Dr. Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmerman published in Nature, Engineered heart muscle allografts for heart repair in primates and humans, reported:" Arrhythmia and tumour growth were not observed on both rat and non-human primate heart failure models. The obtained feasibility, safety and efficacy data provided the pivotal underpinnings for the approval of a first-in-human clinical trial on tissue-engineered heart repair. Our clinical data confirmed remuscularization by EHM implantation in a patient with advanced heart failure."

1/1/2025 Adam Yang lab wishes you and your family a Happy New Year and a wonderful start in 2025!!!

12/05/2024 A collaborative research paper with Dr. Chun Liu and Dr. Joseph Wu was published in Cell Stem Cells to explore the targeted screening of cancer drug-induced cardiotoxicity: CRISPRi/a screens in human iPSC-cardiomyocytes identify glycolytic activation as a druggable target for doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity, Congratulations!

11/6/2024 to 11/7/2024 Adam Yang served on the NIH NHLBI MTI panel in person.

9/30/2024 Congratulations to Angello Huerta Gomez for successfully passing his qualification exam today! Good job, Angello!

The first Ph.D. candidate in Adam Yang’s lab!

9/30/2024 Call for Papers

Cardiac and vascular tissue engineering and regeneration

 BMC Cardiovascular Disorders calls for submissions to a new article Collection on Cardiac and vascular tissue engineering and regeneration. Across this multidisciplinary field, researchers are helping to develop strategies to repair and regenerate cardiovascular tissue. There has been much progress in our understanding of stem cell biology and biomaterials, leading to groups testing the regenerative potential of stem cell-derived cardiovascular cell types for cardiac and vascular tissue repair via direct injection or in the form of in vitro engineered tissues.

In support of SDG3:Good Health & Well-being, this Collection seeks contributions that address a spectrum of topics, including but not limited to:

•How do you ensure transplanted cells/ engineered tissue establish functional connections with host tissue?

•How do you make cells properly mature outside the body for therapeutic purposes?

•How do you direct and deliver stem cells/engineered tissue to sites where they are needed?

•How do we prevent the loss of transplanted cells/engineered tissue after delivery?

•What physiological, mechanical and biochemical cues must we consider when developing therapeutic interventions?

•How can developmental biology and angiogenesis knowledge be applied in regenerative medicine for cardiovascular disorders?

Guest Editors

Tamer M. A. Mohamed, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine, USA

Huaxiao “Adam” Yang, PhD, University of North Texas Biomedical Engineering, USA

Submission Deadline: 30 June 2025

9/20/2024 A new NHLBI R56 Bridging Award was funded to support Adam Yang lab for establishing a platform for evaluating anti-cancer TKI drug-induced cardiovascular toxicity using an AI-organoid system.

9/17/2024 A collaborative research paper with Dr. Bianxiao Cui's lab at Stanford Chemistry was published in Nature Cell Biology: Plasma membrane curvature regulates the formation of contacts with the endoplasmic reticulum, Congratulations!

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

9/17/2024 A collaborative research paper with Dr. Bianxiao Cui's lab at Stanford Chemistry was published in Nature Cell Biology: Plasma membrane curvature regulates the formation of contacts with the endoplasmic reticulum, Congratulations!

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

• A cardiac organoid library with 7 geometric designs created by micropatterning technique

• Single-organoid analytics identifies the geometry-determining physiological properties

• Unsupervised organoid refinement reduces the organoid heterogeneity without human bias

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

03/21/2023 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.

10/12/2022 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 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!

07/18/2022 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.

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.

01/21/2022 The book chapter is published: https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780323998925/current-topics-in-ipscs-technology, Chapter 4 - hiPSC disease modeling with 3D organoids: bioengineering perspective

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

• Hydrogel/biomaterials/Decellularized matrix

• Nano-/micro- patterning and fabrication

• Nano/microparticle for drug delivery

• 3D cell culture: microtissue, engineered heart tissue, and organoids

• Gene and cell therapy

• Engineered tissue

• Organ-on-chip

• Bioprinting

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!

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 

02/01/2021 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!

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

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.

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.

10/23/2020 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!

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