Biomaterials, Drug Delivery,
Tissue Engineering

Helping the body regenerate tissues such as bone and cartilage is just one of the applications of tissue engineering and biomaterials research at Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt engineers in the Biomaterials, Drug Delivery, Tissue Engineering Lab are pioneering new methods and materials to be used to repair and replace damaged or malfunctioning bodily tissues, including materials synthesis and processing, drug delivery, transport in biological systems, tissue engineering and scaffold design. Another facet of their research concerns gene therapy and the development of special polymers to deliver medication.

The laboratory received international recognition for pioneering a method to grow bone in one part of the body to be harvested and grafted to another part of the body to repair it. The laboratory’s success in developing the bone bioreactor promises to lead to advances in engineering tissues of many kinds.

This work has led to the evolution of new paradigms in engineering bone and cartilage within the body using an “in vivo bioreactor” without transplantation of cells or delivery of biomolecules. This represents the first demonstration of de novo engineering of a vascularized organ.

The laboratory has also developed novel biomaterials for delivery of molecules and proteins into cells and to tumors and scaffolds for engineering of replacement blood vessels for use in cardiac bypass procedures.

Director: Prasad Shastri,

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

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