Biomaterials Science Blog

Read Catherine’s Emerging Investigator article, ‘Destructive fibrotic teamwork: how both microenvironment stiffness and profibrotic interleukin 13 impair alveolar macrophage phenotype and function’

Check out Catherine’s lab group webpage to find out more about the group’s research https://sites.udel.edu/cfromen/

You can follow Catherine on Twitter @cfromen and @FromenLab or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathy-fromen/

Read our interview below:

1. How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

I was incredibly excited to receive an invitation to be featured in the Emerging Investigator Series of Biomaterials Science because this journal is one of the top places I look for exciting research within biomaterials and models of the lung, more specifically. Our manuscript introduces a biomaterials-based model of the human airway to evaluate changes to innate immune cells within a fibrotic-like microenvironment. Fibrosis remains such a complex and challenging set of diseases to treat and biomaterial-based models have a tremendous opportunity to unravel this complexity and provide opportunities to screen new therapeutic approaches. Biomaterials Science has been a leader in publishing many influential papers discussing biomaterials approaches to modelling, understanding, and treating fibrosis and I am very proud to contribute our piece in advancing this important field.

2. What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I am certainly excited by the advances that biomaterials have enabled in engineering complex microenvironments that can mimic pulmonary tissue: in structure, composition, and barrier properties. I am even more excited about how these emerging models can be used to predict therapeutic responses in the lung. For inhaled medicines especially, it remains exceedingly difficult to directly sample responses in the airway to understand how inhaled formulations act in the lung; new, complex models will be critical in improving predictive capabilities and advancing inhaled therapeutics, such as inhaled vaccines or immunotherapies. It’s challenging to think about how far we have to go, but motivating at the same time.

3. In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

This a tough question; how to pick just one! For inhaled drug delivery, the big questions are “how can we predict where an inhaled agent goes?” and once there, “how does it work?”, especially in directing local immune responses. Answering these questions will allow us to develop more complex inhalable immunotherapies and better treat patients with respiratory conditions.

4. Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Find your “people” – in life, in your institution, in your professional societies, in your students – and work to maintain those connections. They’re the ones who will pick you up when you fall, cheer for you when you need it most, and open doors you didn’t even know existed.

Dr Suhair Sunoqrot is an Associate Professor of Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine at Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, Faculty of Pharmacy. Dr Sunoqrot received a BSc in Pharmacy from the University of Jordan in 2007, and a PhD in Biopharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2013. During her PhD, she worked on various projects involving the development of lipid- and polymer-based nanocarriers for targeted anti-cancer drug delivery. Notably, she was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar in Prof Phillip Messersmith’s lab at UC Berkeley, and a Daniel Turnberg Fellow in Prof Khuloud Al-Jamal’s lab at King’s College London. She received the PhosAgro/UNESCO/IUPAC Green Chemistry for Life Award in 2018 and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) Prize for Young Scientists from Jordan for the same year. She was elected as a member of the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA) for 2019 – 2024 and a TWAS Young Affiliate for 2021 – 2026. Dr Sunoqrot’s research focuses on the development of nanoscale solutions to tackle delivery challenges of poorly water-soluble drug candidates, with special interest in the valorization of plant polyphenols both as therapeutic agents and as nanomaterial building blocks. She can be followed on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssunoqrot/), ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Suhair-Sunoqrot), and Twitter (@SuhairSunoqrot).

Read Suhair’s Emerging Investigator article, ‘Rhoifolin loaded in PLGA nanoparticles alleviates oxidative stress and inflammation in vitro and in vivo‘ DOI: 10.1039/D2BM00309K

Check out our interview with Suhair below:

1. How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

Nanomedicine is a multidisciplinary field that combines knowledge in materials science, biology, and medicine, making Biomaterials Science an ideal place to publish research on this topic. The Journal’s high standards, rigorous review process, and international readership ensure maximum dissemination of important research findings to the scientific community and beyond.

2. What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I am continuously amazed by the countless possibilities enabled by nanotechnology, particularly in the field of medicine. We are currently interested in plant polyphenols both as therapeutic agents and as nanomaterial building blocks. This area of research is exciting as much as it is challenging, due to the chemical diversity of these compounds and their unique physicochemical and biological properties, which need to be properly elucidated to advance them further in preclinical and clinical settings.

3. In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

With all the great advances being made in nanoscience and nanomedicine, some important questions need to be answered concerning their interactions with the bio-interface, in vivo fate, and long-term physiological effects. From a manufacturing standpoint, the scalability of the various nanomedicine formulations, their affordability, and their environmental footprint should also be taken into consideration.

4. Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

My best advice to other early career scientists is the following quote by Marie Curie, “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”

Dr Truong is an ARC DECRA Fellow and a group leader at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Australia. Dr Truong received his PhD in 2013 from the University of Queensland, Australia. After that, he took up a postdoctoral position working with Prof Thomas Davis at Monash University. Dr Truong’s work uniquely spans across multiple research fields (polymer chemistry, nanotechnology, materials, biology, immunology, medical imaging and pharmaceutical sciences), allowing him to solve complex challenges in both fundamental synthesis and biomedical applications. Currently, his group focuses on making advanced polymers and nanomaterials for delivering drugs and vaccines to the right targeted tissues/cells and exploiting these newly developed platforms to address global health challenges including pandemics, cardiovascular diseases, cancers and antibiotics resistance. He can be found on Twitter @Nghia_P_Truong.

Visit the group website to find out more about Nghia Truong’s research: https://www.monash.edu/pharm/research/themes/drug-delivery-disposition-and-dynamics/research-groups/truong-group

Check out Nghia Truong’s Emerging Investigator article, ‘In vivo delivery of plasmid DNA by lipid nanoparticles: the influence of ionizable cationic lipids on organ-selective gene expression’ and read all of the 2022 Emerging Investigators articles in the collection here.

Read our interview below with Nghia Truong:

1. How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

Biomaterials Science is among the best journals to publish my research on this topic. The journal has not only an excellent reputation and a high impact factor but also a broad readership, ensuring the visibility of my research.

2. What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I am really excited to work on lipid nanoparticles because they really save lives. Without lipid nanoparticles, we could not develop mRNA vaccines for combating COVID-19. The challenge lies in how to improve the lipid nanoparticles even further as the current vaccines are not perfect and there is still a long list of other diseases we can cure using lipid nanoparticles and gene technology.

3. In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

I think the most important question in my field is how to improve the delivery efficiency of lipid nanoparticles while reducing unwanted side effects as the answer will certainly help us make better vaccines and more effective drugs. This is also the question my group is trying to answer by leveraging our strength in multiple research fields (polymer chemistry, nanotechnology, materials, biology, immunology, medical imaging and pharmaceutical sciences).

4. Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

If possible early career scientists should carefully choose and focus on research topics we love and we are good at. With love and talent, we can solve real-life problems while also enjoying our challenging academic careers.

For many years Biomaterials Science has showcased special collections dedicated to work carried out by researchers in the earlier stages of their research careers in our Emerging Investigator collections, most recently in our 2021 Emerging Investigators collection.

We hope that the biomaterials community has found these issues to be valuable, both in the high quality of the articles and in drawing attention to newer voices in the community. The journal editors and Editorial Board consider these to have been highly successful.

In light of disruption to research programmes worldwide, we have taken the opportunity to reassess the format of this initiative, and we are now excited to announce the launch of the Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigators Series.

What is changing?

In place of a dedicated journal issue, Emerging Investigators papers will be published throughout the year. We anticipate the following benefits to this change:

• No fixed submission deadlines allowing more flexibility for authors
• Continual exposure of exciting work from early-career members of the community
• Greater emphasis and focus on individual authors and research groups

We hope for this to offer a better service to our authors and readers well into the future.

What is not changing?

While we will no longer dedicate a specific journal issue to our Emerging Investigators, all other aspects of this initiative will remain the same. This includes:

• Eligibility criteria (see below)
• A dedicated web page for published articles alongside our other collections
• Rigour and speed in peer review
• An overall objective to showcase the full diversity of cutting-edge research carried out from biomaterials scientists in the early stages of their independent careers worldwide

What happens now?

The Biomaterials Science Editorial Office will contact nominated Emerging Investigators throughout the year.

Regarding eligibility, contributors must:

• Publish research within the journal scope
• Currently be an independent research leader
• Have not been featured as an Emerging Investigator in a previous Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigators article
• Have either no more than 12 years of post-PhD research experience in the year of submission when taking into account any career breaks

Do you fit the criteria above, and wish to be featured as an Emerging Investigator in the journal? Get in touch with us at biomaterialsscience-rsc@rsc.org

Arghya Paul is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair Tier II in Advanced Cell-Instructive Materials and Biotherapeutics at the University of Western Ontario. Professor Paul received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from McGill University in 2012 and postdoctoral training at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, prior to starting his independent research career in 2014. His research program has been recognized by several awards including Province of Ontario’s Early Research Award (ERA), Wolfe-Western Fellowship, Canada Research Chair, Young Innovator Award from Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (BMES), Fred Kurata Memorial Professorship. Paul’s Biointel Laboratory at Western focuses on design and development new bioactive materials originating from patient’s own cells, genes, proteins and tissues for diverse biomedical applications, including materials-driven tissue repair and regeneration. He can be found on Twitter @arghya_biointel.

Read Arghya’s Emerging Investigator article “Exploiting the role of nanoparticles for use in hydrogel-based bioprinting applications: concept, design, and recent advances” and check out all of the 2021 Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator articles here.

How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

Excellent place to publish high quality papers in the area on biomaterials research that offers high visibility.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Be bold to take strategic risks. Such risks, new opportunities and experiences will help you grow in new directions that your current roles do not offer.

Tianyue Jiang obtained her Ph.D. degree in Pharmaceutics under the guidance of Prof. Jianping Zhou in the College of Pharmacy at China Pharmaceutical University. From 2012-2014, she was a visiting scholar in Prof. Zhen Gu’s research group in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. She is currently an associate Professor in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Nanjing Tech University. Her group studies controlled drug delivery, bio-inspired materials and nanobiotechnology.

Read Tianyue’s Emerging Investigator article “Topical delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs using nano-hybrid hydrogels to inhibit post-surgical tumour recurrence” and check out all of the 2021 Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator articles here.

How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

The journal is based on the design, function, interaction with the body and related scientific principles of biomaterials, covering the fields of chemistry, biology, pharmacy and materials science, and aims to explore new concepts, designs, functions and applications of biomaterials. I am honored to share my research works.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

My work focuses on the investigation and development of drug delivery systems based on peptide-based materials. Through the arrangement and combination of 20 kinds of natural amino acids and the introduction of exogenous functional groups, we can provide hundreds of millions of peptide molecules. The challenge lies in how to customize peptides with specific functions in a vast array of combinations.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

In my opinion, the most important question is how to effectively solve some interdisciplinary problems and technical bottlenecks in my research field of drug delivery.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Maintain enthusiasm and curiosity for scientific research.

Thomas Werfel is Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Joint Assistant Professor of BioMolecular Sciences, and Affiliate Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at The University of Mississippi (UM). Dr. Werfel received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2017, after which he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. In 2018, he joined the Biomedical Engineering Program at the University of Mississippi and is an inaugural faculty member of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UM – founded in 2019. As a graduate student, Dr. Werfel was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Fellowship. His tenure as a postdoctoral researcher was supported by the NIH F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship. His research has been published in cross-disciplinary journals from Biomaterials and Advanced Materials to PNAS and Cancer Research, and he was recently recognized as a Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator in 2021. His research group at UM works at the interface of bioengineering, materials science, and molecular biology to engineer the medicines of the future. He can be found on Twitter @OleMiss_iNBS.

Read Thomas’ Emerging Investigator article “Immunostimulatory biomaterials to boost tumor immunogenicity” and check out all of the 2021 Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator articles here.

How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

Biomaterials Science is without doubt a premier worldwide journal to publish broad areas of interdisciplinary research that leverages biomaterials.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

We are most excited about our work to leverage newly-discovered and/or recently characterized immunological processes to boost tumor immunogenicity using targeted, biomaterials-based strategies.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

Follow the immunology!! As we continue elucidating the function of the immune system, how can materials be used to modulate these processes toward therapeutic ends?

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Establish balance! You always come back refreshed and reinvigorated when you step away for a while – whether a day, a weekend, or a longer vacation.

Evelyn Yim began her education at the University of Toronto, where she earned her BASc in Engineering Science and MASc in Chemical Engineering, under the supervision of Professor Michael Sefton. She pursued her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University before conducting her post-doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and, under Professor Kam Leong, in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. Between 2007 and 2015 Evelyn worked in Singapore, where she held a joint appointment from the National University of Singapore, as faculty in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Surgery, and the Mechanobiology Institute Singapore, a Research Center of Excellence supported by the National Research Foundation Singapore, as a principle investigator studying how chemical and biomechanical cues influence stem cell behavior. Evelyn Yim joined the University of Waterloo as an Associate Professor in 2016. Evelyn and her Regenerative Nanomedicine Lab group are interested to apply the knowledge biomaterial-stem cell interaction to direct stem cell differentiation and tissue regeneration for neural, vascular and corneal tissue engineering.

Read Evelyn’s Emerging Investigator article “Enhanced efficiency of nonviral direct neuronal reprogramming on topographical patterns” and check out all of the 2021 Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator articles here.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

Excited: the field is moving very fast with a lot of new analytical technologies available

Challenging: getting funding.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

I think the mechanism of cell-materials interaction, including immune response and mechanobiology, is very important.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Try your best! But remember to keep a good work-life balance.

Sidi A. Bencherif received two Master’s degrees in Physical Sciences (2000) and then in Materials Science and Engineering (2002) from the University of Montpellier in France. In 2002, he worked for 3 years as a guest researcher at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In 2009, he received a Master’s degree in Polymer Science and a PhD degree in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2009, he joined as a postdoctoral fellow the laboratory of David Mooney at Harvard University and has been appointed as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northeastern University since 2016. He can be found on Twitter @bencheriflab.

Read Sidi’s Emerging Investigator article “Engineering a macroporous fibrin-based sequential interpenetrating polymer network for dermal tissue engineering” which was featured on the front cover, and check out all of the 2021 Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator articles here.

How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

I feel that Biomaterials Science is an outstanding journal to read about the latest advances in biomaterials research and to publish our work. Biomaterials Science is among one of the few journals where I find the most interdisciplinary and interesting work on biomaterials, tissue engineering, immunoengineering, and beyond.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

Currently, I am most excited about engineering advanced biomaterials to manipulate the fate of mammalian cells, especially immune cells. A challenge in this work is to control the extent of immunostimulation while achieving a beneficial outcome in a safe but also sustained and consistent fashion.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early-career scientists?

One piece of advice I have for other early career scientists is to not be afraid of failure. Many things you try won’t work, but that’s ok. We learn more from failure than from getting something right on the first try. Don’t be discouraged but rather learn from those mistakes, keep working as hard as you can, and everything is going to be all right.

Dr Anna Waterhouse leads the Cardiovascular Medical Devices Group in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney, Australia. Anna is an affiliated Group Leader at the Heart Research Institute and a member of the Charles Perkins Centre and Sydney Nano. She received her PhD from the University of Sydney and conducted her postdoctoral research at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. In 2016, she received a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council and established her multidisciplinary group, focusing on biological interactions at material interfaces combined with cardiovascular medical device engineering, specializing in material thrombosis and bioinspired approaches to improve and design new medical devices and diagnostics. She can be found on Twitter @DrAnnaW_lab.

Read Anna’s Emerging Investigator article “Evaluating medical device and material thrombosis under flow: current and emerging technologies” and check out all of the 2021 Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator articles here.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

One of the most important unanswered questions is how we can fully understand material thrombosis and harness advances in biomaterial development to create medical devices that cause minimal thrombosis, so anti-thrombotic drug use and severe bleeding can be reduced clinically.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Find something you’re passionate about to work on, so when the going gets tough, you’re still doing something you ultimately enjoy.