Mechanical Engineering of Wet-materials (MEOW) Laboratory

To bring awareness of cardiovascular disease, Wiley compiled a World Heart Day (September 29th) collection. Our paper “Mechanical Characterization of hiPSC‐Derived Cardiac Tissues for Quality Control” is featured in the collection. We are glad we are part of the efforts in innovative treatment for heart failures.

Figure: The fabrication steps of printing implantable cardiac tissues. a) hiPSC‐derived cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells, and fibroblasts are combined to form spheroids in U‐bottom, 96‐well plates. The spheroid is used as a basic building block for patch construction. b) Individual spheroids are picked up by the 3D bioprinting tip and transferred onto needle arrays to form the patch. c) After spheroids are fused together, the cardiac patch is decannulated and cultured under the needle‐free condition to allow maturation. Insets: a cardiac patch and a spheroid are shown in blue‐ and red‐framed images.

Seungman’s methods paper “Versatile and High-throughput Force Measurement Platform for Dorsal Cell Mechanics” is accepted. Seungman not only came up with the idea for the paper but also did a terrific job training our beloved former undergrad research assistant Ed, aka the second author of the paper. Missions well accomplished all around!

Wei-Hung’s paper “cell-cell adhesion and myosin activity regulate cortical actin
assembly in mammary gland epithelium on concaved surface” is accepted to be published in Cells, a well-timed good news. It has been a long battle. Thanks for trooping on, Wei-Hung! And congratulations to all the authors. Special thanks are due to our wonderfully amazing collaborator Prof. Sung Hoon Kang – thanks for believing in a crazy idea – your blind faith in us finally pays off.

Seungman’s paper “Economic, Modular and Portable Skin Viscoelasticity Measurement Device for in situ Longitudinal Studies” is accepted to be published in Molecules. We had fun building the device and measuring the skin properties on human volunteers and granny mice. Congratulations!

Deb’s paper “Collagen Matrices Under Pressure and Hydraulic Resistance in Hydrogels” was accepted to be published in Soft Matter. Congratulations, Deb!