The Development and Application of Dynamic Smart Surfaces

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Mammalian cells do not live in static surroundings, they exist in highly evolving dynamic environments. During cell adhesion and migration, cells adapt and communicate to their environment (the extracellular matrix (ECM)) by numerous methods ranging from differentiation, gene expression, growth and apoptosis. How and when cells determine to adhere, polarize and migrate is important to human health via a number of fundamental biological processes such as wound healing, metastasis, inflammation and embryonic development. To elucidate the spatial and temporal mechanisms of these important complex processes on a molecular basis, intense investigation in developing in vitro model substrates that mimic the ECM have been actively pursued. My laboratory has led these efforts and we have pioneered a range of new surface chemistries applied to fundamental studies of interfacial reactions and to the generation of model smart substrates (surfaces) for studies of cell adhesion, cell migration and stem cell differentiation. In the past 5 years, my laboratory has published over 50 papers in these areas in high impact journals (11 JACS, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed,) with several publications highlighted in Science, Nature, Faculty of 1000 and Chemical and Engineering News. In the next 5 years, the overarching training and research goals of this program are to 1. Understand and control cell behaviour on molecularly well-defined model surfaces and 2. To develop smart surfaces for a range of biomolecular microarray biotechnologies. Our approach is multidisciplinary and is based on interfacing new electroactive surface chemistries, microfluidic patterning, live cell imaging and unique fluorescent biosensor cell lines. We anticipate many highly trained interdisciplinary students and that the results of this research will facilitate creating new rapid and sensitive diagnostics that lead to effective treatments for a range of diseases and cancers.