Yuanwei Yan

Area of research

Molecular Biology · Biomedical Engineering

Research interest

Research topics from publications: Modeling Neurodegenerative Microenvironment Using Cortical Organoids Derived from Human Stem Cells; Differential effects of acellular embryonic matrices on pluripotent stem cell expansion and neural differentiation; Pluripotent stem cell expansion and neural differentiation in 3-D scaffolds of tunable Poisson’s ratio; Crosslinking of extracellular matrix scaffolds derived from pluripotent stem cell aggregates modulates neural differentiation; Neural patterning of human induced pluripotent stem cells in 3-D cultures for studying biomolecule-directed differential cellular responses; Asymmetric Biodegradable Microdevices for Cell-Borne Drug Delivery; Facile functionalization and assembly of live cells with microcontact-printed polymeric biomaterials; Intracellular labeling of mouse embryonic stem cell–derived neural progenitor aggregates with micron-sized particles of iron oxide; Catalase-Laden Microdevices for Cell-Mediated Enzyme Delivery; Cryopreservation of embryonic stem cell‐derived multicellular neural aggregates labeled with micron‐sized particles of iron oxide for magnetic resonance imaging. Representative work: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders and causes cognitive impairment and memory deficits of the patients. The mechanism of AD is not well known, due to lack of human brain models. Recently, mini-brain tissues called organoids have been derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) for modeling human brain development and neurological diseases. Thus, the objective of this research is to model and characterize neural degeneration microenvironment using three-dimensional (3D) forebrain cortical organoids derived from hiPSCs and study the response to the drug treatment. It is hypothesized that the 3D forebrain organoids derived from hiPSCs w Use of live cells as carriers for drug-laden particulate structures possesses unique advantages for drug delivery. In this work, we report on the development of a novel type of particulate structures called microdevices for cell-borne drug delivery. The microdevices were fabricated by soft lithography with a disklike shape. Each microdevice was composed of a layer of biodegradable thermoplastic such as poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid). One face of the thermoplastic layer was covalently grafted with a cell-adhesive polyelectro

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