Institute for NanoBioTechnoloy Seminar: Xinqiao Jia

Description

The Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology is pleased to present guest speaker Xinqiao Jia, materials science and engineering professor from the University of Delaware, for a talk entitled "Modular and Biorthogonal Approaches to the Synthesis of Functional Biomaterials."

Jia's team develops biomaterials that guide stem cell differentiation and promote the complex tissues assembly. Using cytocompatible polymer, or peptide building blocks, and employing an ultrafast cycloaddition reaction between s-tetrazine and strained trans-cyclooctene (TCO), the team demonstrated the first example of interfacial bioorthogonal crosslinking using tetrazine ligation to create hydrogel materials through a diffusion-controlled reaction at the gel-liquid interface. When combined with a slower Michael type addition reaction, interfacial bioorthogonal reaction enabled a time-delayed, user-directed modification of cell-laden hydrogel constructs to alter cell morphology, phenotype, and gene expression temporally.