Disease Targets
Prior and ongoing work focuses on materials, mechanisms, and therapeutics for applications in:
Research
New horizons to understand and address complex injuries and repair
Wound Healing
- Discovery of novel intrinsic mediators of wound healing and recombinant biologics development to harness these pathways.
- Identification of pro-healing signaling responses stimulated by biomaterial exposure.
- Development of biomaterial dressings to augment dysregulated healing by sustained delivery of small molecule drugs and protein biologics.
Psoriasis
- Mechanistic investigations of putative drivers of psoriasis and psoriaform dermatitis.
- Discovery and development of therapeutic interventions for psoriasis.
Spinal Cord Injury
- Characterization of the molecular kinetics of spinal cord injury to identify biomarkers of healing and disease.
- Local delivery of immune-modulating treatments directly to the cavity of injury to promote tissue recovery and limit inflammation.
- Development of injectable and systemic biomaterial carriers to deliver therapeutic cargo to the cavity of injury.
Techniques
We employ a diverse array of techniques spanning the fields of biomaterial engineering, cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, and chemistry. In addition to more widely used techniques associated with in vivo and in vitro disease modeling and conventional analytical techniques (e.g., western blotting, RNAseq, etc.), some of the lab’s specialized techniques include:
Quantitative histopathology
- Chromogenic (i.e., clinically relevant) and fluorescent multiplexed immunohistochemical analysis of tissues.
- Development of quantitative analysis routines to facilitate unbiased assessment versus more conventional Likert scales.
- Quantitative evaluation of special stains (e.g., trichromes, polychromes, polarization-sensitive stains).
Rapid metabolic and ionic response sensing
- Development of novel small molecule indicators and genetically-encoded FRET sensors for detection of metabolic and ionic cellular responses on short (sub-1 second) time scales.
- Multiplexed analyte detection in cells (e.g., potassium and calcium) to evaluate coordinated relationships of regulatory events.
- Coordination of cellular events with tissue-level responses to capture non-transcriptomic and non-proteomic responses to materials and drugs.
