| Affiliations: | |
| Project Leader: | Samantha Holt seholt2@tamu.edu Biomedical Engineering |
| Faculty Mentor: |
Dr. Daniel Alge, Ph.D.
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Meeting Times:
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TBA |
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Team Size:
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4 (Team Full) |
| Open Spots: | 0 |
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Special Opportunities:
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Potential to earn co-authorship on a manuscript, as well as research presentations at the BMEN departmental symposium in August and the LAUNCH symposium in the fall
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Team Needs:
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Attendance at required weekly team meetings. Technical writing skills and basic wet lab skills (using a balance, micropipette) are a huge plus, but training will be provided as needed. Creativity and a drive to innovate, as this is a new area of biomaterials research.
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Description:
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Hydrogels are crosslinked networks of hydrophilic polymers that can imbibe large amounts of water without dissolving. Their softness and high water content compared to other polymeric biomaterials has made them especially useful for cell culture applications and diffusion-based drug delivery devices. Recently, our lab has discovered that the choice of crosslinking chemistry in making poly(ethylene glycol)-based hydrogels can impact the properties of the bulk gel, including stiffness, swelling, degradibility, and affinity for certain dye molecules. This project aims to investigate the selective incorporation of click reaction products in the gels to enable temporal control of these gel properties. This may allow for development of a cell culture platform that can exhibit controlled stiffening over time, which has far-reaching implications in the study of fibrotic or inflammation-related diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis, atherosclerosis, and cancer. Additionally, these hydrogels may enable affinity-based controlled release kinetics of certain classes of drugs.
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