E-mail Address: puchen@whu.edu.cn

Office Address: 185# DongHu Road, Wuhan, Hubei, 430071

Position(s): Professor

Affiliation(s):Department of Biomedical Engineering

Research interests / Specialties:Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine; Microfluidic Lab-on-a-chip and Acoustic MOEMS for In Vitro Diagnostics

Education and Training

Professor, 2016-now, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Wuhan University

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2014-2016, Canary Center for Early Cancer Detection, School of Medicine, Stanford University, USA

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2011-2014, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Medical School; Brigham and Women’s Hospital, USA

Doctor of Philosophy, 2005-2011, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China

Bachelor of Science, 2001-2005, Department of Optoelectrical Engineering, China

Research Description

1. Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

Microscale tissue engineering aims to bioengineerin vitro 3D tissue, organ models and human microphysiological systems by exploring microscale technologies and engineering methods and by tuning 3D cell microenvironment including cellular factors, biomaterials, biochemical factors, physical factors. These bioengineered 3D tissue, organ models hold a great promise in innovating conventional paradigm in biomedical research and clinical practices. For example, bioengineered personalized disease models can be used in drug discovery for precision medicine. These tissue, organ models can also be used as 3D preclinical drug screening platform to replace conventional microplate based drug screening and animal tests. As an emerging branch for tissue engineering, microscale tissue engineering will expose a big impact on both basic medical sciences and translational medicine. Our lab will explore the merits of both microfluidic lab-on-a-chip and microscale tissue engineering to tune 3D niches of h-iPSCs and develop human hepatic microphysical systems from h-iPSCs. Our short-term goal is to develop microscale livers for high-throughput preclinical drug screening. Our medium and long-term goal is to develop full-sized and fully-matured liver for clinical transplantation.

2. Microfluidic Lab-on-a-chip and Acoustic MOEMS for In Vitro Diagnostics

In-vitro diagnostics (IVD) are rapidly driven by the increased demands from mobile medical devices and point-of-care testing. In 2014, the market size of IVD is 50 billion USD, in which the market size of China is about 5.5 billion USD with a 17% increase over that in 2013. Our lab will explore our unique advantages in both microfluidic Lab-on-a-chip and acoustic MOEMS to develop novel mobile biomedical devices for IVD. Our short-term goal is to develop exosomes based molecular diagnostic devices for infectious liver diseases and hepatic cancers and push these devices to international biomedical markets.

Honors and Awards

2016Second Place for Oral Presentation for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society - Asia Pacific Meeting (TERMIS-AP) (Taipei)

2014Best Poster Award for Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting (Boston)

2010Agilent Best Poster Award for Symposium on Micro/nano-scale Separation and Analysis & 6th Chinese Conference on Micro Total Analysis System (Shanghai)

Selected Publication

1. Pu Chen#, Sinan Guven#, Berk Usta, Martin Yarmush and Utkan Demirci*. Bio-tunable acoustic node assembly of organoids,Advanced Healthcare Materials,2015, 4(13), 1937–1943. (Co-first author, IF: 5.76)

2. Pu Chen, Zhengyuan Luo, Sinan Güven, Savas Tasoglu, Adarsh V Ganesan, Andrew Weng and Utkan Demirci*. Microscale assembly directed by liquid-based template.Advanced Materials,2014, 26(34), 5936-41. (IF: 17.49) （Featured on the cover of the journal, Reported by Materials View, NewScientist）

3. Pu Chen, Sinan Guven and Utkan Demirci. Scaffold-free cell assembly for tissue engineering.Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine,2014, 8:59. (IF:5.199)

4. Pu Chen, Xiaojun Feng, Rui Hu, Jian Sun, Wei Du and Bi-Feng Liu*. Hydrodynamic gating valve for microfluidic fluorescence-activated cell sorting.Analytica Chimica Acta, 2010, 663: 1-6. (IF: 4.31) (Featured article of the issue)

5. Pu Chen#, Xiaojun Feng#, Jian Sun, Ying Wang, Wei Du and Bi-Feng Liu*. Hydrodynamic gating for sample introduction on a microfluidic chip.Lab on a Chip,2010, 10: 1472-1475. (Co-first author, IF: 6.26)

6. Yiwei Li#,Pu Chen#, Yachao Wang, Shuangqian Yan, Xiaojun Feng, Wei Du, Stephan A. Koehler, Utkan Demirci and Bi-Feng Liu*. Rapid assembly of heterogeneous three-dimensional cell microenvironments in microgel array,Advanced Materials,2016, 28(18), 3543–3548. (Co-first author, IF: 18.96)

7. Charlène Bouyer#,Pu Chen#, Sinan Guven#, Tugrul Tolga Demirtas, Thomas J.F Nieland, Frédéric Padilla and Utkan Demirci*. A bio-acoustic levitational (BAL) assembly method for engineering of multilayered, three-dimensional brain-like constructs, using human embryonic stem cells derived neuro-progenitors,Advanced Materials,2016, 28(1), 161–167.( Co-first author, IF: 18.96)

8. Sinan Guven#,Pu Chen#, Fatih Inci, Savas Tasoglu, Burcu Erkmen and Utkan Demirci*. Multiscale Assembly for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine.Trends in Biotechnology,2015, 133(5), 269-279. (Co-first author, IF: 12.06)

9. Rami El Assal#,Pu Chen# and Utkan Demirci*. Highlights from the latest articles in advanced biomanufacturing at micro- and nano-scale,Nanomedicine,2015, 10, 347-350 (Co-first author, IF: 4.89)

10. Liang Wu#,Pu Chen#, Yingsong Dong, Xiaojun Feng and Bi-Feng Liu* (2013) Encapsulation of single cells on a microfluidic device integrating droplet generation with fluorescence-activated droplet sorting.Biomedical Microdevices,2013, 15(3):553-60. (Co-first author, IF: 2.765)

Patents

1. Bi-Feng Liu, Yiwei Li,Pu Chen, Yachao Wang, Xiaojun Feng, A Surface modification and patterning method, CN154127821,2015

2. Bi-Feng Liu, Yiwei Li,Pu Chen, Yachao Wang, Xiaojun Feng, A method for fabrication and application of a microarray chip, CN154127643,2015

3. Pu Chen, Utkan Demirci, Sinan Güven, Scaffold-free 3D cell assembly based on patterned hydrodynamic drag force, WO2016069493 A2,2015

4. Pu Chen, Utkan Demirci, Reconfigurable assembly with Faraday wave-based Templates WO2014205303 A1 (Issued),2014

5. Linlin Wang, Bifeng Liu, Kui Wu, Yong Hou,Pu Chen, Yingsong Dong, Luting Song, Xun Xu, Microfluidics device and use thereof, WO 2012139517 A1 (Issued),2012

6. Bi-Feng Liu,Pu Chen, Xiaojun Feng, Jian Sun, Microfluidic sample feeding method, device and application thereof, CN 101773861 B (Issued),2011

Open positions

We are looking for one postdoctoral research fellow to study organogenesis from h-iPSCs in bioreactor and the other postdoctoral research fellow to work on lab-on-a-chip and acoustic MOEMS for in vitro diagnostics. The candidate will have close collaborations with a multidisciplinary team from Wuhan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Harvard Medical School and Stanford School of Medicine.

We are also seeking for international students for Master and Doctoral programs in Biomedical Engineering or Physiology in Wuhan University.

Please feel free to contact me via puchen@whu.edu.cn.