News

The Harley Lab welcomes a new graduate student – Jee-Wei (Emily) Chen. Emily is a first year ChBE student who received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan.

Congratulations to Sunny Choi and her collaborators in the Cunningham Lab at UIUC for the acceptance of our new article, ‘Enhanced live cell imaging via photonic crystal enhanced fluorescence microscopy,’ in the journal Analyst. This paper describes use of novel imaging techniques to examine the adhesive fingerprint of individual stem cells on biomaterial substrates. Excellent work!

Congratulations to Laura Mozdzen as well as our collaborators Jess Banks and Ryan Bailey for the acceptance of our new article, “The combined effects of matrix stiffness and growth factor immobilization on the bioactivity and differentiation capabilities of adipose-derived stem cells,” in the journal Biomaterials. This paper is part of project funded by the NSF and NIH that is using photolithography approaches to create overlapping patterns of mechanical signals and multiple growth factors within collagen biomaterials. Great job!

Dr. Harley has received a two-year grant from the Mayo-Illinois Alliance entitled ‘Chip-based engineered tumor microenvironments for glioma therapy.’ Working with Dr. Dan Ma and Dr. Jann Sarkaria from Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN), this project aims to develop a scalable biomaterial tool to facilitate rapid, in vitro assessment of biopsy-derived glioblastoma multiforme cells response to inhibitor cocktails. Congrats to all involved!

Congrats to current trainee Jackie Pence, along with lab alum Emily Gonnerman (MS, 2011) and collaborator Ryan Bailey, for acceptance of our article, ‘Strategies to balance covalent and non-covalent biomolecule attachment within collagen-GAG biomaterials,’ in Biomaterial Science. Some really careful experiments aimed at understanding the balance between specific patterning vs. non-specific biofouling of charged biomolecules to the surface of collagen biomaterials.

Congratulations to Bhushan Mahadik for his successful doctoral defense today, ‘Hydrogel platform to investigate the coordinated impact of niche signals on hematopoietic stem cell fate.’ Bhushan was part of the first cadre of students to join our group back in 2008 and his microfluildic platforms have led to a number of exciting bone marrow and tumor microenvironment projects.

Congratulations to current trainees Jackie Pence and Dan Weisgerber, as well as our collaborators at U. Illinois (Ryan Bailey with Rory Alsop) for the acceptance of our new article, ‘Photopatterning of VEGF within collagen-GAG scaffolds can induce a spatially confined response in human umbilical vein endothelial cells,’ in Acta Biomaterialia. This paper is part of project funded by the NSF and NIH that is aimed at developing photopatterning approaches to tether activity-inducing growth factors within three-dimensional collagen biomaterials. Congrats to all!

Dr. Harley has received a R01 grant from NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) entitled ‘Gradient biomaterials to investigate niche regulation of hematopoiesis.’ This grant will support our work to develop an engineered bone marrow biomaterial. We will be using this platform to optimizing artificial bone marrow systems to study the onset and growth of hematologic disease as well as processes associated with hematopoietic stem cell transplant failure.

Many congratulations to Ji Sun (Sunny) Choi for her successful doctoral defense today, ‘Single-cell approaches to assess hematopoietic stem cell response to matrix cues.’ Sunny was part of the first class of students to join our group back in 2008 and has been instrumental to our growth and success.

Congratulations to lab alums Steven Caliari (PhD 2013) and Emily Gonnerman (MS 2011), current trainees Bill Grier and Dan Weisgerber, as well as our collaborators at U. Illinois (Ryan Bailey) and U. Wisconsin (Bill Murphy) for our new article, ‘Collagen scaffold arrays for combinatorial screening of biophysical and biochemical regulators of cell behavior,’ in Advanced Healthcare Materials. This work describes a scaffold array platform that allows rapid screening of the impact of combinations of structural and biochemical cues on MSC behavior.