Research Overview
Each year in the United States over 1 million individuals will experience a traumatic or ischemic-related brain injury, with 350,000 persons sustaining a severe to moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI) and an additional 800,000 people suffering from stroke. While the inherent regenerative potential of nervous tissue has been realized, the hurdles and barriers formed by scar and inhibitory molecules limit endogenous regeneration and repair. In evaluating current clinical therapies, there is an obvious need for improving diagnostic imaging and in turn targeted delivery of therapeutics to injured or ischemic tissue. My laboratory specifically focuses on (1) engineering novel targeted diagnostic and therapeutic (‘theranostic’) biomaterials for neural injury/disease and (2) identifying endogenous neural stem cell homing mechanisms after injury and incorporating such biosignals into tissue-engineered matrices.
