Hydrogel for Ischemic Tissue Repair — Cell-encapsulated hydrogels are designed to exhibit permeability and stiffness appropriate to support cellular viability and expression of proangiogenic factors. The hydrogels are currently being tested to repair ischemic cardiovascular tissue via neovascularization.
Professor Hyunjoon Kong
Research description pdf

Anticancer drug discovery — researchers have developed several novel anticancer compounds that have potential as therapeutics. The safety and efficacy of these compounds have been validated in cell culture, in mouse models, and (in one case) in pet dogs with lymphoma.
Professor Paul Hergenrother
Professor John Katzenellenbogen
Professor Eric Oldfield
Professor Huimin Zhao
Research descriptions pdf

Effective and reversible cancer drug delivery system — Reversible cell-specific delivery of anti-cancer drugs such as cisplatin without significant damage to regular cells will enhance the antitumor efficacy of the drugs and improve patient compliance. We have reported a controlled formulation of DNA aptamer-conjugated, cisplatin-encapsulated liposome delivery system that allows for cancer cells-specific targeting and drug delivery. This unique approach of using a complementary DNA (cDNA) of the aptamer can function as antidote to regulate the effect of the anti-cancer targeting, allowing the dosage to be adjusted for personal medicine. This strategy for reversible delivery can be adapted to deliver a broad range of anti-cancer agents.
Professor Yi Lu
UIUC News Bureau article

Mining microbial genomes for new antibiotics — The rise of antibiotic resistance amongst pathogens requires a renewed effort to discover new antimicrobial compounds. Sequenced genomes offer unprecedented new genetic information on biosynthetic pathways of natural products that are still the greatest lead source of antimicrobial therapeutics. This multidisciplinary program focuses on the discovery and development of such compounds.
Professor Wilfred A. van der Donk - http://www.igb.illinois.edu/research-areas/mining-microbial/research

Synthetic biology for drug discovery — Synthetic biology is a solution for discovering, characterizing, and engineering natural product biosynthesis for drug discovery and development. Development of new molecular imaging tools for studying cellular signaling pathways involved in cancer and of small molecular regulated gene switches and gene targeting tools for gene therapy are also included in this significant research thrust.
Professor Huimin Zhao
Professor Zhao Synthetic Biology White Paper

High-throughput Screening Facility — houses > 175,000 unique organic compounds, and has all the appropriate robots for high-throughput compound screens. Many of these compounds have been created by researchers at Illinois and are not in standard commercial libraries.
http://www.scs.illinois.edu/htsf/

Biomaterials systems for tendon-bone-interface engineering — Liquid phase co-synthesis approaches are used to create continuous collagen scaffolds comprised of multiple compartments each with tuned properties to mimic the distinct tendinous, osseous, and interfacial zones of the tendon-bone-insertion. Independent modulation, spatially and temporally, of scaffold microstructural, mechanical, and chemical properties are used to create a versatile toolbox of patterned, instructive biomaterials for a range of tissue engineering applications. Integration of polymeric delivery vehicles to control soluble factor, gene release profiles within these patterned collagen biomaterials to improve implant regenerative capacity, kinetics.
Professor Brendan A. Harley (Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering)
Professor Matthew Stewart (Veterinary Medicine)
Professor Daniel Pack (Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering)
Research description pdf

Design of non-viral gene delivery agents — Design of synthetic delivery systems is hindered by lack of understanding of intracellular trafficking mechanisms, and quantitative measurements of the critical intracellular barriers are critical for design and optimization of synthetic vectors. A suite of assays are offered that probe intracellular processing of vectors and correlate trafficking mechanisms with vector chemistry leading to elucidation of important new design criteria.
Professor Daniel W. Pack
Research description pdf

Systems biology of multiple antibiotic resistance — Systems biology tools such as genomics and bioinformatics are used to study the mechanisms of multiple antibiotic resistance in enteric bacterial pathogens. Specifically, integrated models of antibiotic resistance are developed based on high-throughput experimental data and then using these models to study the potential of multi-drug therapies.
Professor Christopher V. Rao

Cell membrane imaging for molecular diagnostics — Chemical imaging techniques, such as secondary ion mass spectrometry, are being used to image the distributions of distinct proteins, lipids, and sterols in the cell membrane in a chemically specific manner and with high lateral resolution. The resulting location-specific compositional information can be combined with standard assays of cellular function to identify how changes in cell membrane organization is correlated with pathological processes, and provide the rationale for the development of therapeutics.
Professor Mary L. Kraft
Research description pdf

Imaging protein folding and misfolding in living cells. — Fast relaxation imaging to study in vivo protein dynamics combines fluorescence microscopy with fast temperature jumps to measure how proteins assemble or mis-assemble within the cell. The technique can enhance our understanding of protein-related disease processes, especially with neurological disorders and diseases that cause dementia such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.
Scientific American article
University of Illinois News Bureau article
Professor Martin Gruebele

Lab-in-a-drop diagnostic microreactors — Ultrasonically-levitated drops allow measurement of reaction kinetics for free-radical-containing systems where ordinary microfluidics would result in unacceptably high levels of radical scavenging at liquid/solid interfaces. We are developing diagnostics to make this into a flexible "Lab in a Drop" system.
Professor Alexander Scheeline

Point-of-care molecular diagnostics— Portable sensors and molecular diagnostic agents for environmental and food quality monitoring, and medical diagnostics have been developed as a point-of-care solution. This platform technology is for on-site and real time detection and quantification of wide range of targets in the environment, food and medical fields, such as heavy metal ions, organic toxins, pesticides, adulterants in the food, bacteria and diseases such as cancer. The sensors/agents have been converted into "dipstick" tests for fast and convenient detection at home and in the field.
Professor Yi Lu
Beckman Institute article
UIUC News Bureau article

Synthesis of cyclic peptide therapeutics — Cyclic peptides find increasing use in human therapeutics but are traditionally difficult to prepare. This research program focuses on posttranslational modification enzymes to install rings into linear peptides in a highly efficient fashion
Professor Wilfred A. vander Donk
Professor Douglas A. Mitchell

Biophysical approaches towards extrinsic regulation of hematopoietic stem cell behavior — Engineered biomaterial systems can be optimized for use as stem cell niche analogs to induce stem cell quiescence versus self-renewal, to generate large populations of specific differentiated cells, or to quantitatively study the etiology of stem cell pathologies. Heterotypic cell arrays and bidirectionally graded hydrogel are used to systematically explore the role juxtacrine vs. paracrine mediated cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions play in early hematopoietic stem cell fate decisions
Professor Brendan A. Harley