Professor, School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest University
Program Focus
The successful design of tissue-engineered constructs drives the need to design novel biocompatible materials and study their interactions with living cells. The field of tissue engineering is highly interdisciplinary and brings together people with knowledge in materials science, chemical engineering, chemistry, cell and developmental biology, immunology, and surgical expertise to solve a range of open problems.
My research focuses on the development of model tissue constructs or functional tissue units and the study of cell-substratum interactions. A primary goal of my research group is to design tissue constructs that mimic the native structure of tissues in vivo and to systematically probe cellular response to a variety of cues. This involves the fabrication of biocompatible scaffolds and templates, and more importantly tailoring surface and bulk properties. Another research interest of our group is to quantify cell-substratum interactions. Specifically, our studies focus on how chemical and mechanical properties of an underlying substratum affect cellular motility and contractility. An increasing focus of my research is to utilize computationally-driven tissue engineering to develop models to predict tissue function, for example, to understand basic liver biology and to study the toxic effects of environmental chemicals on the liver.
Selected Publications
- Tegge AN, Rodrigues RR, Larkin AL, Vu L, Murali TM, Rajagopalan P, Transcriptomic Analysis of Hepatic Cells in Multicellular Organotypic Liver Models
Scientific Reports, in press, 2018. - Orbach SM, Ehrich MF, Rajagopalan P, High-Throughput Toxicity Testing of Chemicals and Mixtures in Organotypic Multi-Cellular Cultures of Primary Human Hepatic Cells, Toxicology in Vitro, 51, 83-94, 2018.
- Ford AJ and Rajagopalan P, Extracellular Matrix Remodeling in 3D: Implications in Tissue Homeostasis and Disease Progression, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews - Nanomedicine and Nanobiotechnology, 10, e1503, 2018.
- Vu LT, Orbach SM, Ray K, Cassin ME, Rajagopalan P, and Helm RF, The hepatocyte proteome in organotypic rat liver models and the influence of the local microenvironment, Proteome Science, 15, 2017.
- Orbach SM, Cassin ME, Ehrich MF, Rajagopalan P, Investigating acetaminophen hepatotoxicity in multi-cellular organotypic liver models, Toxicology in Vitro, 42, 10-20, 2017.
- Orbach SM, Less RR, Kothari A, and Rajagopalan P, In Vitro Intestinal and Liver Models for Toxicity Testing, ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering, 3, 1898-1910, 2017.
- Cassin ME, Ford AJ, Orbach SM, Saverot SE, and Rajagopalan P, The Design Of Antimicrobial LL37-Modified Collagen-Hyaluronic Acid Detachable Multilayers, Acta Biomater., 40, 119-129, 2016.