Research Program

Research Focus - Mequanint Lab

Welcome to the Mequanint Lab! Our lab works at the interface of medicine, polymers, chemical engineering, and ionizing radiation physics. There are two general areas that define our research: (i) Biomaterials, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine and, (ii) 3D gel dosimetry for radiation therapy. We have been actively working in these areas for the past several years. If you are interested to join the lab, please e-mail: kmequani@uwo.ca 

More specifically, we are focusing on the following.

1.  Biomaterials (biodegradable polymers, bioactive organic-inorganic hybrids, conductive biomaterials, naturally-occurring hydrogels)

The design of suitable biomaterials for scaffolding is at the core of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine research. In order to achieve successful regeneration of damaged tissues by tissue engineering approach, we are designing biodegradable biomaterials with controlled biomechanical and biomimetic structures.

Selected relevant publications:

  • Knight et al. Biomacromolecules, 12(7); 2475-2487, 2011; ACS Applied Mater Interfaces, 4(3):1303-1312, 2012; Acta Biomaterialia. 10(8); 3484-3496; 2014; Baillargeon et al. Mater. Eng. 300(2); 1600318; 2017.
  • Allo et al. Langmuir. 26(23):18340-18348; 2010; ACS Applied Mater Interfaces, 4(6);3148-3156; 2012; ACS Applied Mater Interfaces. 5(15):7574-83; 2013. Mondal et al. RSC Adv. 6; 92824-92832; 2016; ACS Appl Bio Mater. 1(5), 1369-1381, 2018.  
  • Wang et al. Adv Functional Mater. 1806200, 2018; Chang et al. Mater. Chem. A, 2019.

 

2. Vascular Tissue Engineering

Despite advances made in diagnosis and treatment, coronary artery occlusion is one of the leading causes of death in Canada. Vascular tissue engineering and regeneration strategies have considerable potential to treat coronary and peripheral artery diseases, but success is still limited owing to significant knowledge gaps in our ability to control, coordinate, and direct functional tissue formation. Our lab is actively working to narrow the knowledge gaps thus accelerating clinically relevant tissue fabrication.

Selected relevant publications:

  • Patel et al. Cardiovasc Res 71(1):40-49, 2006; Grenier et al. Tissue Eng A. 15:3001-3011, 2009;  Xia et al. Biomaterials, 33(8), 2462-2472, 2012; Seifu et al. Nature Cardiology, 10(7); 410-21: 2013; Seifu et al. J Mech Behavior Biomater. 80: 155-163, 2018.

 3. Cell Signaling in synthetic 3D scaffolds

Tissue engineering scaffolds are extracellular matrix surrogates. As such, how cells (primary, progenitor, stem) interact and initiate molecular signaling leading to the desired tissue formation process is an important aspect of tissue engineering. Our lab is actively working on cell signaling on synthetic matrices with the aim of elucidating molecular events. 

Selected relevant publications:

  • Lin and Mequanint. Biomaterials; 33(29); 7047-7056; 2012; Bhattacharyya et al. Tissue Eng A. 20(7-8); 1175-1187; 2014; Lin and Mequanint. Tissue Eng A. 21(17-18); 2356-2365; 2015.

 

4.  Biomolecule delivery strategies

In tissue engineering and regenerative medicine strategies, providing cells with appropriate biological cues is needed. These cues are often provided by multiple growth factors. The delivery of these growth factors both spatially and temporally is an active area of current research in our lab.

Selected relevant publications:

  • Said et al. Pharm Res. 2014; 31(12):3335-47; Tissue Engineering A. 22 (7-8); 584-596; 2016; Mohammed et al. J Biomater Tissue Eng. 7, 561-570; 2017; Said et al. Adv. Healthcare Mater. 2019, 8, 1801294.  

 

5. Non-diffusing radiotherapy hydrogel dosimeters

The goal of radiation therapy is to deliver a highly localized lethal dose of ionizing radiation to tumors while sparing the surrounding healthy tissue. Despite rapid advances in the technology to deliver 3D radiation treatments, efficient measurement of dose distributions in 3D has not been achieved and poses an immediate and substantial problem for quality assurance. Our lab is actively working to develop novel radiochromic 3D gel dosimeter that efficiently measures the delivered dose distribution for single or cumulative radiation exposure. Our focus is on naturally-derived hydrogel materials and tetrazolium-based radiation sensing strategy.  

Selected relevant publications:

  • Penev and Mequanint. Phys. Med. Biol.58; 1823-1838; 2013; J Heterocyclic Chem. 53, 1655-1660; 2016; Med Phys. 44(5):1948-1957; 2017; Hazarika et al. Phys Conf Ser. 1305; 012036; doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1305/1/012036; 2019. Brzozowski et al. Magnetic Resonance Imaging. 57, 40-49, 2018.