Bio-Materials and Therapeutics in Bio-Systems and Space Applications

Understanding the structural and functional behavior of biological materials is key to designing better bio-compatible systems such as implant, implantable sensors, therapeutic methods and wearable devices for various enabling functions. Understanding of how biological materials evolve and self-organize is also important in engineering better materials. Behavior of biological materials in space environmental is also an important subject of interest here. We use various computational techniques and tools to analyze and further experiment with biological materials. Among them, our current interests are in bone materials, which is complex composite materials with various length-scales and functional properties.

With the advancement of microfluidic instrumentation and opto-electronic sensing technology, it is now possible to study biological materials by growing and modifying them in their micro-environments similar to the realistic system where they perform their functions naturally. Such micro-level and indeed systemic understanding can help in addressing problems of degradation/aging in biological materials, their resistance to infection, electromagnetic radiation and ionization. It is also of interest to understand in these systemic micro-environments, how essential supplies and drug molecules respond to various competitive tasks. Current research effort includes various opto-electronic sensing and drug assisted therapeutics studies. Schematic shown below on nano-material based drug formulation for treatment of bone is a research work being carried out in collaboration with Prof. R. Razdan’s lab at the Department of Pharmacology, Al-Ameen College of Pharamacy, Bengaluru.