News

Congratulations to Mai for successfully defended her PhD thesis today, ‘Developing a biomaterial model of the glioblastoma perivascular niche to investigate the effects of angiocrine signals on disease progression.’ Mai has led some exceptional programs in our group to reimagine how tissue engineering platforms can be generated and used to study progression and therapeutic resistance in glioblastoma, the most common and lethal form of primary brain cancer. Mai’s contributions fundamentally shifted our research program in GBM and we are so proud of all her work! She will be moving to a fantastic postdoc with Dr. Chris Chen in the Biological Design Center at Boston University and we will miss her very much! Congratulations Dr. Ngo!

Dr. Harley is the PI of a new R01 research award from the National Institutes of Health entitled, ‘Perivascular tissue models to overcome MGMT-mediated temozolomide resistance in glioblastoma.’ Dr. Harley is leading a team, including Co-Investigators Dr. Paul Hergenrother & Dr. Time Fan (Illinois), Dr. Rebecca Riggins (Georgetown), and Dr. Jann Sarkaria (Mayo) to develop a cancer tissue engineering program to investigate pathophysiological processes responsible for invasive spreading, therapeutic resistance, and poor survival in glioblastoma, the most common and lethal form of primary brain cancer. Congrats all!

This is exciting news as this award also provides the opportunity for the HarleyLAB to join the NCI Cancer Tissue Engineering Collaborative (CTEC) program, and initiative to help push the boundaries of how tissue engineering technologies can be exploited to accelerate diagnosis and treatment of cancer!

Dr. Sara Pedron has been selected as one of the NextGen Star speakers at the AACR Annual Meeting 2021. Her talk will be included in one of three dedicated NextGen Stars Spotlight Sessions. The AACR Annual Meeting 2021 will take place virtually Saturday, April 10. Annual Meeting website

Marley wins the Annual Innovation Award for Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis from Durgam and Subha Chakrapani Family Trust! This is awarded to a student demonstrating the potential for commercialization in the field of Materials Science and Engineering. Marley was awarded funds to support professional development and commercialization as well as a medallion.

Marley and Brendan published an article titled “Inclusion of a 3D-printed Hyperelastic Bone mesh improves mechanical and osteogenic performance of a mineralized collagen scaffold” in Acta Biomaterialia. This describes their work towards regenerating craniomaxillofacial bone defects by combining mineralized collagen scaffolds with 3D-prints from chicago-based company Dimension Inx, LLC. Check it out here!

Congratulations to Aidan for successfully defended his PhD thesis today, ‘Soluble factors and remodeling in a synthetic stem cell niche.’ Aidan transformed our efforts to create artificial platforms to culture hematopoietic stem cells in the laboratory. While we are excited that he will be moving on to a fantastic postdoc with Dr. Sarah Heilshorn at Stanford University,  we will miss him very much! Congratulations again Dr. Gilchrist!

Marley presented a poster titled “How to repair bone in 3 easy steps” which can be viewed on the SWE website: WE20: Come See Research from SWE’s Next Generation – All Together.

Mai and Brendan published a review article titled “Angiogenic biomaterials to promote therapeutic regeneration and investigate disease progression” in Biomaterials. Check it out here!

 

Mai won first place in the oral section and Aliki won first place in the poster section of the 19th Annual CHBE Symposium.

Mai presented a virtual on-demand talk titled “Hydrogels with Gradient Vascularization to Screen the Effect of Angiocrine Cues in Stem Cell Niches” at the annual Biomedical Engineering Society meeting, and she also won a Career Development Award. Congratulations Mai!