Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Characterizing Mechanical Regulation Of Bone Metastatic Breast Cancer Cells, Boyuan Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

Breast cancer most frequently metastasizes to the skeleton. Bone metastatic cancer is incurable and induces wide-spread bone osteolysis, resulting in significant patient morbidity and mortality. Mechanical stimuli in the skeleton are an important microenvironmental parameter that modulates tumor formation, osteolysis, and tumor cell-bone cell signaling, but which mechanical signals are the most beneficial and the corresponding molecular mechanisms are unknown. This work focused on bone matrix deformation and interstitial fluid flow based on their well-known roles in bone remodeling and in primary breast cancer. The goal of our research was to establish a platform that could define the relationship between …

Application Of Halloysite Nanotubes In Bone Disease Remediation And Bone Regeneration, Yangyang Luo

Doctoral Dissertations

Customized patient therapy has been a major research focus in recent years. There are two research fields that have made a significant contribution to realizing individualized-based treatment: targeted drug delivery and three-dimensional (3D) printing technology. With benefit from the advances in nanotechnology and biomaterial science, various drug delivery systems have been established to provide precise control of therapeutic agents release in time and space. The emergence of three-dimensional (3D) printing technology enables the fabrication of complicated structures that effectively mimic native tissues and makes it possible to print patient-specific implants. My dissertation research used a clay nanoparticle, halloysite, to develop …

Engineering Bacterial Cellulose Scaffold And Its Biomimetic Composites For Bone And Cartilage Tissue Regeneration, Pelagie Marlene Favi

Doctoral Dissertations

A very promising approach to quickly and safely restore normal function to extensively damages and diseases bone and cartilage tissues is the regeneration of these injured tissues using an engineered support scaffold. This dissertation research focuses on the development and evaluation of native bacterial cellulose (BC) and chemically modified BCs as potential biomaterials for bone and cartilage regeneration using equine-derived bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (EqMSCs).

The ability of native BC scaffold to maintain cell proliferation, viability, and in vitro differentiation of the seeded EqMSCs for application in bone and cartilage tissue engineering was studied. BC morphology was characterized using …

Femtosecond Laser Patterned Templates And Imprinted Polymer Structures, Deepak Rajput

Doctoral Dissertations

Femtosecond laser machining is a direct-write lithography technique by which user-defined patterns are efficiently and rapidly generated at the surface or within the bulk of transparent materials. When femtosecond laser machining is performed with tightly focused amplified pulses in single-pulse mode, transparent substrates like fused silica can be surface patterned with high aspect ratio (>10:1) and deep (>10 μm) nanoholes. The main objective behind this dissertation is to develop single-pulse amplified femtosecond laser machining into a novel technique for the production of fused silica templates with user-defined patterns made of high aspect ratio nanoholes. The size of the …

Modulation Of Bone And Nerve Cell Behavior Using Biodegradable Polymer Networks, Lei Cai

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents novel biodegradable and photo-crosslinkable building blocks to achieve polymer networks with controlled surface chemistry, stiffness, and topographical features for investigating cell-material interactions and targeting hard and soft tissue engineering applications. Chapter I reviews the recent progress in polymeric gel systems and how their physical properties can be tailored to regulate cell functions and satisfy the clinical needs. Chapter II presents a facile method to synthesize photo-crosslinkable poly(epsilon-caprolactone) acrylates (PCLAs) and reveal tunable cell responses to photo-crosslinked PCLAs. Chapter III investigates the mechanism of colorization in preparing crosslinkable polymers by reacting hydroxyl-containing polymers with unsaturated anhydrides or acyl …

Applied Electrokinetics For Tissue Engineering Applications, Stephanie R. Tully-Dartez

Doctoral Dissertations

Tissue engineering could provide an alternative source of transplant tissue regardless of donor supply and with reduced risk of immune rejection. Engineered tissue requires three critical components for successful development: the cells, growth factors, and the scaffold on which they will initially grow. The scaffold acts as a temporary extracellular matrix (ECM) allowing cell attachment and acclimation to the environment prior to synthesis and construction of the cell's native ECM. Prior to cell seeding, the scaffold must be characterized to determine whether or not the pore geometry is conducive to cell implantation. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) provides a unique and …