College of Virginia assistant engineering professor Liheng Cai has earned the Maximizing Investigator’s Analysis Award from the Nationwide Institutes of Well being. His work holds vital implications for the way forward for customized biomedicine, together with the potential for repairing residing tissue, maybe even changing complete organs.
The NIH honor, bestowed by its Nationwide Institute of Common Medical Sciences, alerts its help for researchers performing breakthrough analysis. The related grant will infuse his lab on the UVA Faculty of Engineering and Utilized Science with $1.9 million over the subsequent 5 years.
The grant will permit Cai to additional his examine of tissue restore and illness development by way of the superior residing mobile constructions his workforce within the Gentle Biomatter Lab creates. Cai holds a joint appointment within the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Supplies Science and Engineering, and a courtesy appointment within the Division of Biomedical Engineering.
For now, the constructions exist outdoors of the human physique. However the lab will proceed to enhance upon how the constructions mimic human biology. Certainly one of Cai’s main aspirations is to sometime combine wholesome, bio-printed cells into the human physique.
“One of many main parts of the award is to develop biomaterials that may be constructed from tiny, primary modules,” stated Cai, who joined the UVA Engineering college in 2018. “The mechanical properties of the modules will mimic the mechanical properties of human tissue. This method is constructed on a category of polymers -; bottlebrush polymers -; my lab has been pioneering.”
I want to thank the Institute for this very substantial funding and present of religion in our lab’s potential. I credit score the excellent, supportive atmosphere right here at UVA for making this award potential.”
Liheng Cai, College of Virginia assistant engineering professor
The award builds on his Nationwide Science Basis CAREER Award and ACS Petroleum Analysis Fund Doctoral New Investigator Award. He additionally acquired the UVA Analysis Excellence Award final 12 months.
The brand new announcement raises Cai’s sponsored funds at UVA to over $4 million.
Bioprinting impressed by Minecraft®
His lab’s new polymer -; named for its particular structure resembling a bottlebrush for cleansing glassware -; will be chemically or bodily linked to type extraordinarily smooth materials that mimics organic tissues.
These tissue mimics are additionally a part of the workforce’s technique to make 3D printing of organic supplies potential.
Cai’s lab lately proved the idea for “voxelated bioprinting.” It is a type of programmable cell meeting impressed by the net recreation Minecraft®, Cai famous.
“The favored online game makes use of particular person 3D cubes as ‘voxels’ to create a digital world,” he stated. “We developed voxelated bioprinting applied sciences in the actual world. Our know-how assembles cell-encapsulated droplets right into a specifically designed printer. Throughout the printing course of, we create 3D cell assemblies with the precise structure and features that we programmed.”
Cai believes that this know-how might pave the best way for printing organs on demand -; really customized drugs.
He stated he and his workforce are “extending our design technique to engineer modular cell-instructive biomaterials.” They imagine the bottlebrush structure holds the potential for encoding the complexities that exist in our our bodies’ personal numerous tissues.
En path to that objective, the lab aspires to print 3D cell-based fashions that operate just like human tissue, in order to check illness development. In a single venture, the workforce is creating what Cai calls a “micro-human airway system” to seize the geometric and organic options of human airways.
“We’re investigating the interactions between mucus and three indispensable parts of the microenvironment: cilia, cells and micro organism,” he stated. “The thought is to use this biologically related system to check human lung protection, with out having to trigger hurt to residing beings.”
First organs is likely to be vocal cords
Cai’s present profession journey has been constructed on his different explorations into the elemental nature of polymers, which will be outlined by their supply (man-made or natural), chemical construction or technique by which they’re made.
Pure polymers are integral to our our bodies. They’re important for sustaining the construction, operate and regulation of varied tissues and organs. Their potential to self-assemble and work together with different molecules and cells permits them to carry out advanced organic features which might be essential for all times.
A objective of Cai’s has been to learn the way cells greatest reply over time to precision therapies utilizing his specifically engineered polymers. He and his workforce lately developed “soft-yet-dry elastomers,” that are very stretchable and smooth polymers.
Cai additionally famous the putting similarity between the fabric and human vocal cords, which at present cannot be changed if they’re too severely broken.
Gentle-yet-dry elastomers might doubtlessly have many makes use of although, he stated, together with as extra sturdy and compliant medical units, and in wearable electronics and smooth robots.
Creating ‘self-healing’ polymers
Cai has additionally extensively researched associative polymers, which will be water-soluble and are discovered inside the pure biopolymers within the extracellular matrix that surrounds and helps cells and tissues within the physique. They carry many “stickers,” or chemical constructions that type easy-to-break, reversible bonds, Cai defined.
Researchers have lengthy been in pursuit of understanding the stickiness attribute as a result of they believed this operate held the important thing to recreating biomaterials that match the conduct of residing tissue.
In a associated analysis venture, Cai and colleagues lately found by way of experiments that such stickiness is managed by the density of the bonding constructions, upending greater than three a long time of idea.
Polymer physicists had beforehand believed that the mechanical conduct of associative polymer networks -; together with their stickiness and reversibility -; was ruled by the sticker bond energy. The scientists thought so due to what they noticed. When bonding associations are maintained, a form change known as a “rubbery plateau” happens.
Cai’s workforce needed to create new lessons of associative polymers, “carrying unprecedentedly excessive variety of stickers,” he stated, to show their very own idea.
“We experimentally confirmed that reversible bonds considerably decelerate the polymer dynamics however hardly change form as they chill out over time ,” Cai stated associated to the influential June 2023 paper in Bodily Assessment Letters. He collaborated with Shiwang Cheng of Michigan State College and others on the paper.
“This new discovery is important to the event of biomaterials that match how organic tissues reply to stress over time,” Cai added.
Placing all of it collectively
Cai’s division heads stated they’ve been excited to see the weather of his MIRA analysis come collectively: a modular bottlebrush construction underlying new biomaterials and a bioprinting know-how that may exactly assemble the supplies to create 3D tissue mimics.
William Epling, chair of the Division of Chemical Engineering, congratulated Cai on his award and shared his ideas on the importance.
“There is no doubt in my thoughts that Liheng’s analysis in polymers and smooth matter will impression, and finally result in, the event of designer biomaterials that information cell operate,” Epling stated.
Epling is an skilled in supplies characterization and floor and interface science, amongst different sides of chemical engineering.
Elzabeth J. Opila, chair of the Division of Supplies and Science Engineering, stated, “Professor Cai is doing transformative work that bridges supplies science, smooth supplies and biomedical engineering. I am wanting ahead to the breakthrough science enabled by this prestigious award.”
The award follows a “Rising Star” designation Cai and fellow UVA Engineering assistant professor of chemical engineering Rachel Letteri acquired in March. ACS Polymers Au featured Cai and Letteri as simply two of 14 early-career researchers from around the globe who’re leaders in polymer science and engineering.
He additionally lately acquired the 2024 PMSE Early Investigator Award and the 2020 Gentle Matter Rising Investigator Award.
Cai’s analysis dovetails with the Precision Drugs/Well being part of the College’s “Grand Challenges,” which exist to assist remedy among the world’s most pressing issues.
