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theses

Nanomaterials are highly versatile and allow us to effectively and dynamically control a myriad of biomedical application from stem cell differentiation to diagnostics and translational therapeutics. While the scientific community has made tremendous strides in understanding disease and treatments, the complexities of disease and injuries still undermine the full realization of therapies. To this end, this dissertation will focus on the approaches within the novel nanotechnology toolbox for addressing multiple challenges in the field of regenerative medicine with the ultimate goal to regrow and reform damaged tissues and organs. Specifically, this dissertation addresses the regeneration of neural tissues within the central nervous system as the regeneration of such tissue is extremely challenging in the first two decades of the 21$^{st}$ century.
The first part of the dissertation will focus on the innovative insoluble extracellular approaches for controlling the differentiation of neural stem cells (NSCs) into neurons and supporting cells such as oligodendrocytes. Traditionally, biologists have focused on introducing exogenous materials such as proteins and chemical factors to induce specific stem cell differentiation. The goal of our novel insoluble nanomaterial approaches is to uncover the interaction between cells and their surrounding environments for differentiation. The second part of the thesis will focus on the clinical translational approaches of nanomaterials. Through a novel, non-viral transient gene manipulation method developed by Prof. Lee research laboratory, NanoScript, a nanoparticle-based synthetic transcription factor was tasked to regenerate axon in spinal cord injury. This demonstration is tremendous progress in regenerative medicine as it holds a promise for the regulation of every gene expression in a living biological system. Finally, this dissertation will focus on the development of highly sensitive, selective, real-time, and non-invasive characterizations of stem cell differentiation. The development of such an approach will have a significant impact on cell-based therapy. By overcoming the destructive nature of traditional cellular characterization methods, the clinicians can confirm the mature differentiation of stem cells before transplantation to completely avoid potential tumor formation. As such, more cell-based therapies will find their ways into clinical applications.
Altogether, this dissertation covers the widely collaborative nanomaterial-based approaches from guiding the differentiation of stem cell, biosensing, and non-viral nanoparticle for gene expression regulation, to the transplantable nanofiber-nanomaterial hybrid scaffold with the foundation of nanochemistry with well-defined biochemical, chemical, and physical compositions, shapes, and properties.

ETD_9473

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Sy-Tsong Dean Chueng

doi:10.7282/t3-hd9x-rs68

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.