Research Overview
The Engineered Cellular Microenvironments and Microstructures (ECM2) lab, in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of lllinois, develops tools to fabricate, characterize, model, and use three-dimensional biomaterials for a wide range of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. A central paradigm of our work is the development of engineered microstructures that allow modulation of extrinsic regulators of cell behavior in defined increments, and their use to identify material properties to improve construct bioactivity or to induce desired cell behaviors at the single cell or cell population levels. Our research thrusts are primarily focused on developing materials and methods that can be applied to clinically-based problems, are of interest to biomaterial and biotechnological companies, and emphasize multi-disciplinary, collaborative interactions with colleagues in both academia and industry.
Lab News
May 2013
Congrats to Dr. Caliari!
Many congratulations to Steven Caliari for his successful doctoral defense today. The first from our group! Steven was part of...
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May 2013
Dr. Harley featured as part of '100 Stories of Hope'
Dr. Harley has been featured as part of the '100 Stories of Hope' celebrating the 100th birthday of the American Cancer Society...
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May 2013
Congrats to Bill for passing his quals!
Congrats to Bill Grier for officially passing his oral qualifying exam in the ChBE dept...
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Apr 2013
Dr. Harley's paper in Nat Cell Biology!
Congratulations to Dr. Harley for acceptance of a new article, “Quantitative imaging of haematopoietic stem and progenitor ce...
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Apr 2013
Eftalda Becka off to Colorado-Boulder too!
Another Boulder connection! Congratulations to Harley Lab undergraduate research assistant Eftalda Becka for accepting an offer...
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Recent Publications
2013. S.R. Caliari, B.A. Harley*, Composite growth factor supplementation strategies to enhance tenocyte bioactivity in aligned collagen-GAG scaffolds, In Press, Tissue Eng Part A
2012. E.A. Gonnerman, D.O. Kelkhoff, L.M. McGregor, B.A. Harley*, The promotion of HL-1 cardiomyocyte beating using anisotropic collagen-GAG scaffolds, Biomaterials [DOI]
2012. S.R. Caliari, D.W. Weisgerber, M.A. Ramirez, D.O. Kelkhoff, B.A. Harley*, The influence of collagen-glycosaminoglycan scaffold relative density and microstructural anisotropy on tenocyte bioactivity and transcriptomic stability, J Mech Behav Biomed Mater [DOI]
Contact
Brendan Harley, Sc.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering 110 Roger Adams Lab, MC-712, Box C-3 600 S. Mathews Avenue Urbana, IL 61801 USA Phone: 217.244.7112 Fax: 217.333.5052 Email: bharley@Illinois.edu