|
The overall goal of our research is to regenerate functional and safe human tissues by combining the principles of biomaterial science, biological science, stem cell biology, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine with the advanced techniques of molecular and cell biology.
Dr. Wen has very broad research interests in many areas of Bioengineering. Many lines of research in biomaterials, tissue engineering, stem cell and regenerative medicine have been established. His group with strong emphasis on translational bioengineering research is focused on biomedical devices (e.g., nerve guidance devices, "living" cochlear implants, intraocular delivery devices, etc), new biomaterial development (such as synthesizing bioactive, biodegradable, and highly elastic synthetic polymers or hydrogels; modifying natural polymers for improved properties; light curable biomaterials; etc), nanostructured biomaterials (nano-ceramics, nano-degradable drug carriers, nano-paramagnetic materials, etc.), tissue engineering scaffold design and fabrication (such as laser microfabrication, photolithography-based microfabrication, phase inversion, electrospinning, and biomimetic approaches), dynamic bioreactor design and development (such as computer-controlled dynamic cell-air interfacing respiratory bioreactor, dynamic compression bioreactor, dynamic tension bioreactor, dynamic fluid or air shearing bioreactor, etc.), in vitro and in vivo tissue engineering (such as neural tissue engineering for the treatment of Spinal Cord Injury and Neurodegenerative Diseases), human long bone tissue engineering based on highly aligned scaffolds and stem cells, cartilage tissue engineering based on strong elastic gels and stem cells, heart patch tissue engineering, etc.), animal models for translational research (several animal models are available in our lab, such as spinal cord injury model, Parkinson's disease model, heart infarction model, cartilage defect model, long bone defect model, deafness model, optical nerve crush model, etc.), stem cell biology (we are studying many different sources of stem cells, such as human embryonic stem cells, human umbilical cord blood or bone marrow stem cells, human adipose tissue derived stem cells, etc. for tissue regeneration), drug delivery (Four types of drug delivery system, including selective-permeable hollow fiber membrane, liposome, microsphere, nano-gel/nano-particle, and combined system are used to deliver drugs, growth factors, genes, and cells to several different types of tissues), genetic engineering (permanent or temporally modifying cells or tissues with special functions), and proteomics (such as using proteomics approach to understand the behavior of cells and tissues under aging, microgravity and other conditions).
|
