Research
Research Area 1. Large
Scale Cell Culture Platforms for BioManufacturing
Park's group has been developing
cost-effective and reliable platforms to culture animal cells on
a large scale for biopharmaceutic production and stem cell
therapy.
Rolled scaffold (RS) is a fully
engineered meta-material for high-density adherent culture of
animal cells. Bioreactors based on RS can culture a large
population of adherent cells reliably and efficiently.
Hollow microcarrier (HMC) is a
microcarrier to culture stem cells in a stirred tank bioreactor.
It is a hollow sphere and the cells grow on its inner surface,
enabling robust expansion of shear-sensitive stem cells on a large
scale.
>> A. Yekrangsafakar, A.
Acun, J. W. Choi, E. Song, P. Zorlutuna, and K. Park, "Hollow
microcarriers for large-scale expansion of anchorage-dependent
cells in a stirred bioreactor," Biotechnology and bioengineering,
115(7), 1717-1728, 2018.
Research Area 2.
Biomechanical Characterization of Adherent Cellls
Mechanical
properties of cells are being actively investigated to
understand their physiological and pathological characteristics.
Park's group is devloping on practical techniques to investigate
mechanical properties of adherent cells with a focus on cancer
diagnostics and mechanobiology.
An OptoMechanical platform
isdeveloped, which optically measures the mechanical stiffness of
single adherent cells by laser interferometry. This platform is
highly innovative, in that it is non-contact and non-invasive.
>> K. Park, A.
Mehrnezhad, E. Corbin, and R. Bashir, "Optomechanical measurement
of the stiffness of single adherent cells," Lab on a Chip, vol.
15, pp. 3460-3464, 2015
>> A. Mehrnezhad and K.
Park, "Multi-frequency optomechanical stiffness measurement of
single adherent cells on a solid substrate with high throughput,"
Analytical Chemistry, 2017.
An Ultrathin Cantilever is
developed to measure the cell traction force of cancer cells and
to build a self-stabilizing swimming biorobot actuated by living
heart muscle cells.
>> M. Holley, A.
YekrangSafakar, M. Maziveyi, S. K. Alahari, K. Park, "Measurement
of cell traction force with a thin film PDMS cantilever,"
Biomedical Microdevices 19 (4), 97, 2017.
>> M. Holley, N.
Nagarajan, C. Danielson, P. Zorlutuna, and K. Park, "Cardiac
Muscle Cell-based Actuator and Self-stabilizing Biorobot-Part 1,"
Journal of Visualized Experiments, 123, e55642, 2017.N.
>> Nagarajan, M. Holley,
C. Danielson, K. Park, and P. Zorlutuna, "Cardiac Muscle
Cell-based Actuator and Self-stabilizing Biorobot-Part 2," Journal
of Visualized Experiments, 123, e55643, 2017.
>> M. Holley, N.
Nagarjan, C. Danielson, P. Zorlutuna, and K. Park, "Development
and characterization of muscle-based actuators for
self-stabilizing swimming biorobots," Lab on a Chip, vol. 16,
3473, 2016 (featured as inside front cover).