Hongji Yan

KTH Royal Institute of Technology | KTH · Department of Chemistry

Mitochondrial damage is one of the primary causes of neuronal cell death in Parkinson's disease (PD). In PD patients, the mitochondrial damage can be repaired or irreversible. Therefore, mitochondrial damage repair becomes a promising strategy for PD treatment. In this research, hyaluronic acid nanoparticles (HA-NPs) of different molecular weights...

Osteoclast (OC) abnormalities represent osteoporosis's critical mechanism (OP). OCs undergo multiple processes that range from monocytic to functional. Different drugs target OCs at different developmental stages; however, almost no Suitable drug-targeted delivery systems exist. Therefore, we designed two dual-targeting nanoparticles to target OCs...

Background Mitochondrial damage is one of the primary causes of neuronal cell death in Parkinson's disease (PD). In PD patients, the mitochondrial damage can be repaired or irreversible. Therefore, mitochondrial damage repair becomes a promising strategy for PD treatment.Methods We use hyaluronic acid nanoparticles (HA-NPs) of different molecular w...

Immune-modulating biomaterials used to encapsulate cells and microtissue transplants can be engineered to dampen the immune reaction and increase treatment efficacy. Mucin-derived materials have gained attention for their ability to modulate macrophage and dendritic cell activity, and to trigger mild foreign body response when implanted in vivo. In...

In vitro cancer models that can largely mimic the in vivo microenvironment are crucial for conducting more accurate research. Models of three-dimensional (3D) culture that can mimic some aspects of cancer microenvironment or cancer biopsies that can adequately represent tumor heterogeneity are intensely used currently. Those models still lack the d...

Hydrogels made of crosslinked macromolecules used in regenerative medicine technologies can be designed to affect the fate of surrounding cells and tissues in defined ways. Their function typically depends on the type and number of bioactive moieties such as receptor ligands present in the hydrogel. However, the detail in how such moieties are pres...

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are self-renewing and constitute the primary cause of cancer relapse post-cancer therapy. The CSC niche is composed of various nonmalignant stromal cells that support CSCs' survival during cancer chemoradiotherapy. Understanding the cross-talk between CSCs and stromal cells could pave the way for developing therapeutic stra...

Gaining control over the delivery of therapeutics to a specific disease site is still very challenging. However, especially when cytotoxic drugs such as chemotherapeutics are used, the importance of a control mechanism that can differentiate ‘sick’ target cells from the surrounding, healthy tissue is pivotal. Here, we designed a nanoparticle based...

Mucins are multifunctional glycosylated proteins that are increasingly investigated as building blocks of novel biomaterials. An attractive feature is their ability to modulate the immune response, in part by engaging with sialic acid binding receptors on immune cells. Once assembled into hydrogels, bovine submaxillary mucins (Muc gels) were shown...

Mucins are multifunctional glycosylated proteins that are increasingly investigated as building blocks of novel biomaterials. Once assembled into hydrogels (Muc gels), mucins were shown to modulate the recruitment and activation of immune cells and avoid fibrous encapsulation in vivo. However, nothing is known about the early immune response to Muc...

The immune‐mediated foreign body response to biomaterial implants can trigger the formation of insulating fibrotic capsules that can compromise implant function. To address this challenge, the intrinsic bioactivity of the mucin biopolymer, a heavily glycosylated protein that forms the protective mucus gel covering mucosal epithelia, is leveraged. B...

The many interesting properties of chitosan polysaccharides have prompted their extensive use as biomaterial building blocks, for instance as antimicrobial coatings, tissue engineering scaffolds, and drug delivery vehicles. The translation of these chitosan-based systems to the clinic still requires a deeper understanding of their safety profiles....

Three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures developed with living cells and scaffolds have demonstrated outstanding potential for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. However, no suitable tools are available to monitor dynamically variable cell behavior in such a complex microenvironment. In particular, simultaneously assessing cell...

The naked mole rat (nmr) is cancer resistant due to the abundant production of extremely high-molecular-weight hyaluronan (EHMW-HA). However, whether EHMW-HA has similar anti-cancer effects in mice and humans remains to be determined. The present study used breast cancer cells to clarify the effect of EHMW-HA on breast cancer. First, the overexpres...

The immune-mediated foreign body response to biomaterial implants can trigger the formation of insulating fibrotic capsules that can compromise implant function. To address this challenge, we leverage the intrinsic bioactivity of the mucin biopolymer, a heavily glycosylated protein that forms the protective mucus gel covering mucosal epithelia. By...

Mucins are high molar mass glycoproteins that assume an extended conformation and can assemble into mucus hydrogels that protect our mucosal epithelium. In Nature, the challenging task of generating a mucus layer several hundreds of micrometers in thickness by micrometer-sized cells, is elegantly solved by the condensation of mucins inside vesicles...

Synthetic scaffolds that possess an intrinsic capability to protect and sequester sensitive growth factors is a primary requisite for developing successful tissue engineering strategies. Growth factors such as recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-2 (rhBMP-2) is highly susceptible to premature degradation and to provide a meaningful clinical...

Embryonic microenvironments can reverse the metastatic phenotype of aggressive tumors by inhibiting the Nodal signaling pathway. Here, we hypothesize that embryonic microenvironments can be transplanted for the purpose of oncotherapy. We report the development of an injectable bioactive hydrogel system containing the key antagonists of Nodal signal...

Degradation of plasmid DNA (pDNA) in the endosome compartment and its release to the cytosol are the major hurdles for efficient gene transfection. This is generally addressed by using transfection reagents that can overcome these limitations. In this article, the first report is presented which suggests that controlling the release of pDNA from en...

A method for preparing bioactive injectable hydrogel materials for oncotherapy relates to the method for preparing the bioactive injectable hydrogel materials and is a novel strategy for the oncotherapy. The method for preparing the bioactive injectable hydrogel materials for the oncotherapy includes the following steps of (1) preparing transparent...

The interactions between cancer cells and the extracellular matrix (ECM) are important with respect to a number of cell behavoirs, yet remain unclear. In this study, self-assembled monolayers with different terminal chemical groups (hydroxyl (-OH), carboxyl (-COOH), animo (-NH2), mercapto (-SH), and methyl (-CH3)) were employed as substrates for th...

Aldehydes have been used as an important bioorthogonal chemical reporter for conjugation of large polymers and bioactive substances. However, generating aldehyde functionality on carbohydrate based biopolymers without changing its native chemical structure always persisted as a challenging task. The common methods employed to achieve this require h...

The aim of this study was to demonstrate the effects of the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activator 5-amino-4-imidazolecarboxamide riboside (AICAR) in combination with arsenic trioxide (ATO) in acute myeloid leukemia cells and determine its mechanism of action. Cell lines were either exposed to each drug alone or both the drugs simultaneously...

This study investigated intracellular oxidative stress and its underlying mechanisms in a rotary cell culture system used to achieve a simulated microgravity (SMG) environment. Experiments were conducted with human breast cancer cell lines MCF-7 (an estrogen receptor (ER) α positive cell line) and MDA-MB-231 (an ERα negative cell line) encapsulated...

To overcome bad prognosis of patients with heart failure and the lack of organ donors, cardiac tissue engineering has developed as a biomimetic approach to repair, replace, and regenerate the damaged cardiac tissue. During the past decade years, researchers are devoted to find different natural and/or synthetic materials that can build appropriate...

Rotary cell culture systems (RCCS) have been shown to be promising for promoting three-dimensional (3D) cell growth and assembly of cells into functional tissues. In this study, 3D tissue-like spheroids of MCF-7 cells were constructed by encapsulating the cells in the collagen-alginate hydrogel, and then cultured in a RCCS to investigate the prolif...