Hyunjoon Kong

As we age, our bodies change and degenerate over time in a process called senescence. Stem cells, which have the unique ability to change into other cell types, also experience senescence, which presents an issue when trying to maintain cell cultures for therapeutic use. The biomolecules produced by these cell cultures are important for various medicines and treatments, but once the cells enter a senescent state they stop producing them, and worse, they instead produce biomolecules antagonistic to these therapeutics.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been chosen to co-lead the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago—a new biomedical hub—with researchers from Illinois, the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. The three-university team was selected as part of a competitive application process (https://www.czbiohub.org/) for a research initiative explicitly focused on measuring human biology.

Exercise looks a little different en route to the Red Planet, so Professor Marni Boppart (RBTE) got creative. Boppart and her colleagues received $1 million from the Translational Research Institute for Space Health, a NASA-funded institute, to explore the regenerative power of cells in space. Their research will help protect human health aboard Orion, the spacecraft destined to ferry astronauts from the Earth to the moon and Mars.

The National Science Foundation awarded a 7-year, $15 million project to a multi-university team led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The resulting ground- breaking and path-finding research, entitled “Mind in vitro - Computing with Living Neurons,” will imagine computers and robots that are human designed, but living.

What is the best time of day to take your medications?

An interdisciplinary team received a grant to study the circadian dynamics of the blood-brain barrier, including the extent to which time of day affects its permeability to hormones and drugs. The team includes researchers from Illinois and Purdue University.

Hyunjoon Kong (M-CELS leader/EIRH/RBTE), Robert W. Schafer professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, approaches cancer research from a perspective that integrates cell engineering and biomaterials. The Kong research team has been working with Georgia Tech University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) over the past 10 years under the National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center Grant.

Thin tissue grafts and flexible electronics have a host of applications for wound healing, regenerative medicine and biosensing. A new device inspired by an octopus’s sucker rapidly transfers delicate tissue or electronic sheets to the patient, overcoming a key barrier to clinical application, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and collaborators.

For years, artificial systems - such as robots and machines - have been used for industrial applications, making a tremendous impact on society. However, steady progress made by scientists could see the replacement of artificial systems with “Multi-Cellular Engineered Living Systems” (M-CELS) composed of living cells and extracellular matrices organized to perform novel functions absent in natural systems. 

In regenerative medicine, an ideal treatment for patients whose muscles are damaged from lack of oxygen would be to invigorate them with an injection of their own stem cells.

In a new study published in the journal ACS Nano, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated that “nanostimulators” – nanoparticles seeded with a molecule the body naturally produces to prompt stem cells to heal wounds – can amp up stem cells’ regenerative powers in a targeted limb in mice.

By injecting cells that support blood vessel growth into muscles depleted by inactivity, researchers say they are able to help restore muscle mass lost as a result of immobility.

The research, conducted in adult mice, involved injections of cells called pericytes (PERRY-sites), which are known to promote blood vessel growth and dilation in tissues throughout the body. The injections occurred at the end of a two-week period during which the mice were prevented from contracting the muscles in one of their hind legs.