Yadong Wang is a professor of Bioengineering with adjunct positions in Chemical Engineering and Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry at Stanford University in 1999, and performed his postdoctoral studies in biomaterials at MIT. He joined the Bioengineering Department at University of Pittsburgh in 2008 after serving as an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology for 5 years. His research focuses on creating biomaterials that present controlled chemical, physical, and mechanical signals to cells, tissues and organs. The ultimate goal is to control how the human body interacts with these materials. He is especially interested in applications of biomaterials in the cardiovascular, nervous and musculoskeletal systems. His team enjoys collaboration with other scientists and clinicians who share the same passion in translational research. Current projects of the Wang lab are highly translational and include vascular grafts, controlled release of proteins and microfabrication of biomaterials.

Research Interests:
1. Fast degrading cell-free synthetic grafts for cardiovascular tissue regeneration
2. Natural fast degrading materials for self-assembly of vascular tissues in vitro

Research Interests:
Growth factor delivery, ischemic tissue repair, wound healing

Research Interests:
Regenerative Molecule Delivery

Research Interests: Drug Delivery

Project: Biologically-derived nano cells for tissue engineering

Research Interests:
1. Peripheral nerve repair
2. Complex scaffold design via templated electrospinning

Project: My current project combines electrospinning with sacrificial templates to create intricate designs aimed at mimicking the native tissue structure. Specifically, micropatterned multi-channel conduits composed of degradable polycaprolactone (PCL) fibers were designed to mimic the channels and fibrous nature in peripheral nerve.

Research Interests: Drug Delivery

Project: I use a novel heparin-polycation delivery system to provide controlled delivery of growth factors for a number of applications. Our delivery vehicle is a coacervate, an emulsion-like assortment of droplets that self-assemble, incorporate heparin-binding growth factors, protect them from degradation, and slowly release them over time. The coacervate is injectable and stays localized to the site of injection. I'm currently investigating the efficacy of controlled growth factor delivery in cardiac repair (for heart failure patients), wound healing (for skin injuries), and bone/cartilage regeneration (for cranial/long bone defects and arthritis). We use the same coacervate delivery system in all cases but the growth factors are selected for a specific desired outcome. I am also investigating growth factor therapy to improve tissue engineering approaches by coating biodegradable vascular scaffolds and nerve guide conduits with our delivery system. The controllable, sustained release that our delivery system provides could be widely beneficial to any application of growth factor therapy.

Research Interests: Drug Delivery

Project: Development of encapsulated heparin-mediated polycation for a sustained release of a variety of growth factors

Interests: Blood vessel tissue engineering

Project:

Interests: Blood vessel tissue engineering

Project: The objective of this project is to engineer functional small-diameter arteries by culturing vascular cells on novel elastomeric tubular scaffolds in pulsatile flow bioreactor. Porous tubular scaffolds will be fabricated from poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) by using salt fusion method and optimized their macro-/micro-structures. Primary baboon vascular ECs, SMCs, and fibroblasts will be seeded into the scaffolds subsequently and co-cultured in pulsatile flow bioreactor for 3 weeks. The properties of tissue-engineered constructs will be examined by histological, biochemical, and mechanical analyses.

Research Interests: Controlled drug delivery systems for use in the central nervous system.

Project: I am studying the ability of injectable polymer systems to sustain the release of therapeutic proteins in both the eye and the spinal cord. In the eye, we use a temperature-sensitive material, poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(serinol hexamethylene urethane), or ESHU, to deliver anti-angiogenic proteins intravitreally. ESHU undergoes a sol-gel phase transition upon increasing the temperature to body temperature, and when combined with therapeutics, creates a drug-filled hydrogel in situ, enabling localized, sustained release. In the spinal cord, we are studying the ability of a novel polycation-heparin based delivery system to control growth factor release to improve recovery following traumatic injury. The delivery system interacts with growth factors electrostatically, protecting them from degradation and theoretically increasing their therapeutic efficacy. Especially attractive is the ability of this system to combine multiple growth factors and therapies, which is desirable in instances of spinal cord injury, where injuries are complex and diverse.