About Us
The Bioinspired Microdevice and Microphysiological System (BioM2) Lab focuses on developing and utilizing human-based functional living tissues and biomimetic microsystems as alternative and complementary approaches to animal models for disease modeling, drug screening, and regenerative medicine. We leverage our expertise in microfluidics, microfabrication, biomaterials, 3D tissue culture, and stem cell technologies to create tissue engineered microphysiological systems that represent human organ units, organ systems (Multi-organ-on a-Chip, MOC), or the human body (Body-on-a-chip, BOC), modeling both structure and function. Human-based, tissue-engineered microsystems, while useful for any disease modeling, would be particularly useful to model human diseases that lack appropriate animal models or are difficult to investigate in vivo. We are particularly interested in understanding and tackling multi-organ diseases with body-on-a-chip technologies.
We are also interested in developing BOC systems as 鈥渉uman surrogates鈥 to simulate human response to therapeutics and in combination with physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) mathematical modeling to obtain valuable pharmacokinetic information. We believe these tissue- engineered microsystems, while based on in vitro cell culture, have the ability to reproduce the complex interactions among organs and tissues that occur in the living body. They hold great promise to advance our understanding of human disease, revolutionize drug development, and even reshape clinical practice.
