Biomaterials

Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer in women in India. In every 4 minutes in India, one woman is diagnosed with breast cancer (BC), and in every 13 minutes one woman dies of it. Hence, a detailed and deep understanding of the disease progression is much needed for successful therapeutic intervention. One major stage in cancer progression is metastasis in which tumor cells leave their original site and recolonize into a new tissue. For metastatic BC, prognosis is generally poor.

In this project, the aim is to understand quantitatively the molecular elasticity of biopolymers with potential engineering applications. The first example is Spider Dragline Silk, which may be several times stronger than steel (after normalizing the density). The work involves experimental, computational and theoretical analyses of the molecular structure of the biopolymer system.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the cancers having the lowest 5-year survival rate, because of its late diagnosis and availability of only a couple of known drugs with very moderate increase in patient’s survival. Based on our earlier work, we have shown that, nanoparticle mediated delivery of existing drugs can enhance the cytotoxicity in cancer cells.

In this project the candidate is expected to prepare various materials, estimates their rheological properties, and then explore the effect of rheological properties on cell fate in the context of stem cell differentiation and cancer. This project will supervised jointly by Prof. Jyoti Seth and Prof. Abhijit Majumder. To get a flavor of the work, interested candidate may look at the following papers:

Objectives: To develop zebrafish based models for understanding action of nanomedicines including Ayurvedic and Homeopathic ones. To test them by physico-chemical and biological means: in-vitro in mammalian cell culture, in-vivo in small animals and fish, fish embryos, and behavioral studies. Studies will include medicines across multiple systems of medicine and mainly experimental with some model building and simulations.

Objectives: To develop customized devices for closing holes in hearts and other tissue repair with 3D printing and newer methods of fabrication for bio-resorbable polymers. To test them by computer simulations and by physico-chemical and biological means: in-vitro in mammalian cell culture and in-vivo in small animals, and perhaps first-in-human.

To develop customized grafts for bone and other tissue with 3D printing and other fabrication technologies, and to develop new methods of fabrication for bio-resorbable scaffolds. To test them by physico-chemical and biological means: in-vitro in mammalian cell culture, in-vivo in small animals, and perhaps first-in-human.

A surprising new development in materials science and chemical engineering is the finding that mixtures of hard (colloidal), and soft (polymeric, or micellar) particles can self organize on length scales much larger than the diameter of either species.  In this project we explore the behavior of connected hard- and soft particles.  An elementary knowledge of coding is sufficient.