Graduate chemistry student creates material to study tissue growth

Abstract

Modern medicine has the desire to replace damaged tissue with newly grown tissue, such as to repair skin, bone, cartilage, or arteries. But what kinds of surfaces could be used to grow suitable tissues? Suolong Ni, a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, has fabricated a biopolymer onto solid surfaces with a range of properties to enable the study of the effects of different surfaces on cell adhesion and tissue growth.