UT Shield

About

The Suggs Lab aims to develop clinically relevant and robust biomaterial platforms for characterizing, modeling and treating disease and injury, including applications in ischemic and inflammatory disease as well as cancer. Towards this goal we develop synthetic and natural polymeric hydrogels and well as micro and nanoparticle systems. In particular, we are interested in modeling, controlling and characterizing the cellular response to biomaterials. Our portfolio includes: injectable hydrogels to deliver stem cells and growth factors to treat ischemic disease, metal nanoparticle platforms used in combination with photoacoustic imaging to characterize the inflammatory response to stem cell therapies, material systems to interrogate the effects of matrix stiffness on cancer cells and cells of the tumor immune microenvironment, and nanoparticle systems to drive macrophage polarization either towards pro- or anti-inflammatory phenotypes depending on the disease condition.

Areas of Research

  • Self-Assembling Peptides
    Summary: Scaffolds play essential roles in drug delivery and tissue engineering. They not only provide the architecture to deliver therapeutics and to support cells, but also physical cues for cell behavior, including attachment, proliferation, and gene expression. Superior scaffolds have a variety of characteristics in common: they have a physical structure similar to the extracellular… read more 
  • Extracellular Matrix Stiffness
    Summary: Soft tissue tumors, including breast cancer, become stiffer throughout disease progression. This increase in stiffness has been shown to correlate to malignant phenotype and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in vitro. Unlike current models, utilizing static increases in matrix stiffness, our group has previously created a system that allows for dynamic stiffening of an alginate–matrigel composite hydrogel… read more 
  • Macrophage Repolarization
    Summary: Macrophages that have engulfed apoptotic cells tend to polarize toward an anti-inflammatory (M2) phenotype over a pro-inflammatory (M1) phenotype. Our lab is interested in which characteristics of apoptotic cells cause this shift. We also utilize the anti-inflammatory nature of apoptotic cells to produce nanoparticle systems to aid in the calming of inflammation for regenerative… read more