Yadong Wang

Cornell University | CU · Department of Biomedical Engineering

Wound healing is a dynamic process that relies on coordinated signaling molecules to succeed. Heparin-binding epidermal growth factor (EGF)-like growth factor (HB-EGF) is proven to accelerate healing, however precise control over its application is necessary to reduce side effects and achieve desired therapeutic benefit. To achieve effective growth...

Host remodeling is important for the success of medical implants, including vascular substitutes. Synthetic and tissue-engineered grafts have yet to show clinical effectiveness in arteries smaller than 5 mm in diameter. We designed cell-free biodegradable elastomeric grafts that degrade rapidly to yield neoarteries nearly free of foreign materials...

Enhancing the maturity of the newly formed blood vessels is critical for the success of therapeutic angiogenesis. The maturation of vasculature relies on active participation of mural cells to stabilize endothelium and a basal level of relevant growth factors. We set out to design and successfully achieved robust angiogenesis using an injectable po...

Heart attack is a global health problem that leads to significant morbidity, mortality, and health care burden. Adult human hearts have very limited regenerative capability after injury. However, evolutionarily primitive species generally have higher regenerative capacity than mammals. The extracellular matrix (ECM) may contribute to this differenc...

Zinc (Zn) is a new class of bioresorbable metal that has potential for cardiovascular stent material, orthopedic implants, wound closure devices, etc. However, pure Zn is not ideal for these applications due to its low mechanical strength and localized degradation behavior. Alloying is the most common/effective way to overcome this limitation. Stil...

Purpose: Environmentally-triggered dry eye disease (DED) or keratoconjunctivitis sicca (KCS), which constitutes the majority of DED cases, currently is palliatively treated with aqueous replacement solutions that do not target the dysfunction of the mucin and lipid components of tears. Herein, we tested whether a peptide that increased goblet cell...

Human mesenchymal stem cells/multipotent stromal cells (MSCs) hold great promise in aiding wound healing through their ability to modulate all phases of repair and regeneration, most notably their secretion of pro-regenerative paracrine factors. However, MSC clinical utility is hindered by poor survival rates post-transplantation due to the harsh m...

Nonunion following bone fracture and segmental bone defects are challenging clinical conditions. To combat this clinical dilemma, development of new bone tissue engineering therapies using biocompatible materials to deliver bone growth factors is desirable. This aim of this study is to use a heparin/polycation coacervate sustained-release platform...

An alkyne-functionalized elastomer derived from sebacic acid, 1,3-propanediol, and alkyne-functionalized serinol is synthesized via melt condensation. A low-power UV lamp triggers the cross-linking rapidly via thiol-yne click chemistry. The cross-linking behavior is studied by photorheology and NMR spectroscopy. The resultant elastomer possesses me...

Cutaneous wound healing is an intricate orchestration of three overlapping phases of repair that encompass numerous cell types, signaling cascades, and microenvironment modifications to reach a successful resolution. Disruption of any of these steps will create an abnormal healing response resulting in either ulceration or excessive scarring. It ha...

Zinc (Zn) is a new generation of biodegradable metal as temporary biomedical implants with a promising degradation rate. However, its clinical applications have been limited because of the insufficient mechanical properties. Considering the degradation property and biocompatibility, we proposed Zn–Sr alloys after extrusion treatments to simultaneou...

Zinc (Zn) is a promising bioresorbable implant material with more moderate degradation rate compared to magnesium (Mg) and iron (Fe). However, the low mechanical strength and localized degradation behavior of pure Zn limit its clinical applications. Alloying is one of the most effective ways to overcome these limitations. After screening the alloyi...

Background: Following the discovery of heart regeneration in zebrafish, several more species within the Cyprinidae family have been found to have the same capability, suggesting heart regeneration may be conserved within this family. Although gonad regeneration has been observed in grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella), one of the largest cyprinid...

The effort to develop an effective and safe temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disc substitute has been one of the mainstreams of tissue engineering. Biodegradable customized scaffolds could meet safety and effectiveness to regenerate a new autologous disc, rather than using non‐biodegradable materials. However, it is still technically challenging to mi...

Multiple additive manufacturing techniques have been developed in recent years to produce structures with tunable physical, chemical, and mechanical properties and defined architecture. Solution electrospinning, although an older and more established technique, normally cannot achieve the pattern resolution and tunability of these newer manufacturi...

Cardiovascular stents are life‐saving devices and one of the top ten medical breakthroughs of the 21st century. Decades of research and clinical trials have taught us about the effects of material (metal or polymer), design (geometry, strut thickness, and the number of connectors), and drug‐elution on vasculature mechanics, hemocompatibility, bioco...

Vasculopathy and the consequential ischemia are major medical challenges. Grafting is an effective treatment to vascular occlusion. However, autologous grafting, despite scarcity, is the only choice for small diameter blood vessels. Synthetic grafts can fill the gap if they can work satisfactorily in arterial circulation. Electrospun polycaprolacto...

Poly(glycerol-sebacate) (PGS) is a biodegradable elastomer known for its mechanical properties and biocompatibility for soft tissue engineering. However, harsh thermal crosslinking conditions are needed to make PGS devices. To facilitate the thermal crosslinking, citric acid is explored as a crosslinker to form poly(glycerol sebacate citrate) (PGSC...

Digital light processing (DLP)-based three-dimensional (3D) printing offers large improvements in fabrication throughput and spatial resolution when compared to various other additive manufacturing techniques. Both properties are highly desirable when fabricating biomaterial scaffolds that require design precision. Poly(glycerol sebacate) acrylate...

Widely present in nature and in manufactured goods, elastomers are network polymers typically crosslinked by strong covalent bonds. Elastomers crosslinked by weak bonds usually exhibit more plastic deformation. Here we report chelation as a mechanism to produce biodegradable elastomers. Polycondensation of sebacic acid, 1,3-propanediol and a Schiff...

Small‐diameter vascular grafts perform poorly as arterial bypasses. We developed a cell‐free, resorbable graft intended to remodel in situ into a living vessel. The graft consisted of a soft electrospunpoly (glycero l sebacate) (PGS) core, a PGS prepolymer (pPGS) coating, and areinforcing electrospunpoly(ε‐caprolactone) (PCL) sheath. The core conta...

Wall stress is often lower in tissue-engineered constructs than in comparable native tissues due to the use of stiff polymeric materials having thicker walls. In this work, we sought to design a murine arterial graft having a more favorable local mechanical environment for the infiltrating cells; we used electrospinning to enclose a compliant inner...

Strategies that can reduce harmful side effects of potent immunomodulatory drugs are in high demand to facilitate clinical translation of the newest generation of immunotherapy. Indeed, uncontrolled triggering of the immune system can lead to life-threatening cascade reactions such as e.g. cytokine storm. In particular, drug formulations that combi...

Exogenous dual delivery of progenitor cell population and therapeutic growth factors (GFs) is one of alternative tissue engineering strategies for osteochondral tissue regeneration. In the present study, an implantable dual delivery platform was developed using coacervates (Coa) (i.e., a tertiary complex of poly(ethylene argininylaspartate diglycer...

Mechanical properties and degradation profile are important parameters for the applications of biodegradable polyester such as poly(glycerol sebacate) in biomedical engineering. Here, a strategy is reported to make palmitate functionalized poly(glycerol sebacate) (PPGS) to alter the polymer hydrophobicity, crystallinity, microstructures and thermal...

Porous synthetic grafts made of poly (glycerol sebacate) (PGS) can transform into autologous vascular conduits in vivo upon degradation of PGS. A long-held doctrine in tissue engineering is the necessity to match degradation of the scaffolds to tissue regeneration. Here, we tested the impact of degradation of PGS and its derivative in an interposit...

This multidisciplinary work shows the feasibility of replacing the fetal pulmonary valve with a percutaneous, transcatheter, fully biodegradable tissue-engineered heart valve (TEHV), which was studied in vitro through accelerated degradation, mechanical, and hemodynamic testing and in vivo by implantation into a fetal lamb. The TEHV exhibited only...

The bio-integrated electronics industry is booming and becoming more integrated with biological tissues. To successfully integrate with the soft tissues of the body (eg. skin), the material must possess many of the same properties including compliance, toughness, elasticity, and tear resistance. In this work, we prepare mechanically and biologicall...

The scarcity of data available on the best approach for pulmonary fetal valve replacement or implantation necessitate an investigation on whether practices using adult transcatheter valves could be translated to fetal applications. The objective of this study is to evaluate the hemodynamic characteristics and the turbulent properties of a fetal siz...

Polyurethane is an important biomaterial with wide applications in biomedical engineering. Here, we report a new method to make an azido-functionalized polyurethane pre-polymer with no need of post modification. This pre-polymer can easily form stable porous elastomers through click chemistry for crosslinking, instead of using a toxic polyisocyanat...

Melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer with one of the fastest increasing incidence rates among solid tumors. The use of checkpoint inhibitors (e.g. αPD-1 antibody) has recently emerged as a viable alternative to conventional modes of therapy. However, increasing evidence points towards the need for a tumor priming step to improve intratumor...

Background: Osteoarthritis and cartilage injury treatment is an unmet clinical need. Therefore, development of new approaches to treat these diseases is critically needed. Previous work in our laboratory has shown that murine muscle-derived stem cells (MDSCs) can efficiently repair articular cartilage in an osteochondral and osteoarthritis model....

A cardiovascular stent is a small mesh tube that expands a narrowed or blocked coronary artery. Unfortunately, current stents, regardless metallic or polymeric, still largely fall short to the ideal clinical needs due to late restenosis, thrombosis and other clinical complications. Nonetheless, metallic stents are preferred clinically thanks to the...

Supercritical fluid technology has emerged as a cost-effective and low-hazard alternative to solvent-based methodologies in polymer synthesis, pharmaceutical science, and related biomedical applications. In this review, we first briefly describe the distinctive features of a supercritical fluid, biodegradable polyesters, and lipases. We will then c...

In order to achieve effective bone regeneration, the architectural/structural and biological environment must be considered. In this study, we investigated the influence of structure of extracellular matrix-mimicking electrospun poly (l-lactic acid) (PLLA) fibrous scaffolds and incorporated growth factors (bone morphogenetic protein2 (BMP2) and pla...

Following the discovery of heart regeneration in zebrafish, several more species within the Cyprinidae family have been found to have the same capability, suggesting heart regeneration may be conserved within this family. Although gonad regeneration has been observed in grass carp ( Ctenopharyngodon idella ), one of the largest cyprinid fish, the s...

Here we report optimization and scale-up of a biodegradable polycation, poly(ethylene argininylaspartate diglyceride) (PEAD) for the purpose of clinical translation. This polycation complexes heparin to form a coacervate. The resultant complex coacervate acts as a vehicle for controlled delivery of therapeutic proteins and through the bioactivity o...

Zinc has been described as the ‘calcium of the twenty-first century’. Zinc-based degradable biomaterials have recently emerged thanks to their intrinsic physiological relevance, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and pro-regeneration properties. Zinc-based biomaterials mainly include: metallic zinc alloys, zinc ceramic nanomaterials, and zinc meta...

Heart disease remains a leading killer in western society and irreversibly impacts the lives of millions of patients annually. While adult mammals do not possess the ability to regenerate functional cardiac tissue, neonatal mammals are capable of robust cardiomyocyte proliferation and regeneration within a week of birth. Given this change in regene...

Although there are numerous medical applications to recover damaged skin tissue, scarless wound healing is being extensively investigated to provide a better therapeutic outcome. The exogenous delivery of therapeutic growth factors (GFs) is one of the engineering strategies for skin regeneration. This study presents an exogenous GF delivery platfor...

Zn-based biomaterials have emerged as promising new types of bioresorbable metallics applicable to orthopedic devices, cardiovascular stents, and other medical applications recently. Compared to other degradable metallic biomaterials (i.e. Mg- or Fe-based), Zn biomaterials have a more appropriate corrosion rate without hydrogen gas evolution. Here,...

Zinc has been described as the ‘calcium of the twenty-first century’. Zinc-based degradable biomaterials have recently emerged thanks to their intrinsic physiological relevance, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and pro-regeneration properties. Zinc-based biomaterials mainly include: metallic zinc alloys, zinc ceramic nanomaterials, and zinc meta...

Direct administration of bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) for bone regeneration could cause various clinical side effects such as osteoclast activation, inflammation, adipogenesis, and bone cyst formation. In this study, thiolated gelatin/poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) interpenetrating (IPN) composite hydrogels were developed for guid...

Traditional tissue-engineered vascular grafts have yet to gain wide clinical use. The difficulty of scaling production of these cell- or biologic-based products has hindered commercialization. In situ tissue engineering bypasses such logistical challenges by using acellular resorbable scaffolds. Upon implant, the scaffolds become remodeled by host...

Purpose Biodegradable polymeric scaffolds have been used for tissue engineering approaches and can also be employed to regenerate the TMJ joint tissues. Synthetic acellular polymeric Poly (glycerol sebacate) (PGS) scaffolds and natural scaffolds made from gelatin, are polymeric scaffold sponges that may provide a substrate for cell infiltration and...

The aqueous nature of complex coacervates provides a biologically-relevant context for various therapeutic applications. In this sense, biological applications demand a corresponding level of biocompatibility from the polyelectrolytes that participate in complex coacervation. Continued development with naturally-occuring polyelectrolytes such as he...

Continuing advances in the fabrication of scaffolds for tissue engineered vascular grafts is greatly expanding the scope of potential designs. Increasing recognition of the importance of local biomechanical cues for cell-mediated neotissue formation, neovessel growth, and subsequent remodeling is similarly influencing the design process. This study...

Poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) is an elastomer used widely in tissue engineering studies due to good biocompatibility. Hereby we report a tyramine functionalized PGS called PGS-TA. Tyramine adds a stronger physical bonding capability to PGS-TA. Tensile tests showed that the softness and toughness of the material were similar to PGS. However, PGS-TA...

A fundamental mechanism of in situ tissue regeneration from biodegradable synthetic acellular vascular grafts is the effective interplay between graft degradation, erosion and the production of extracellular matrix. In order to understand this crucial process of graft erosion and degradation, we conducted an in vitro investigation of grafts (n = 4...

The biodegradable elastomeric polyester poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) was developed for soft-tissue engineering. It has been used in various research applications such as wound healing, cartilage tissue engineering, and vascular grafting due to its biocompatibility and elastomeric properties. However conventional PGS manufacture is generally limite...

The contemporary absence of an ideal treatment for patients with severe TMJ disorders can be related to difficulties concerning the appropriate study design to conduct preclinical trials in the TMJ field. These difficulties can be associated with the use of heterogeneous animal models, the use of the contralateral TMJ as control, the absence of ran...

Transplanted stem/progenitor cells improve tissue healing and regeneration anatomically and functionally mostly due to their secreted trophic factors. However, harsh conditions at the site of injury, including hypoxia, oxidative and inflammatory stress, increased fibrosis and insufficient angiogenesis, and in some cases immunological response or in...