Xiaoguang Dong, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been awarded an R21 Trailblazer Award by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pursue a project about “Wirelessly Actuated Ciliary Stent for Minimally Invasive Treatment of Cilia Dysfunction.”
The Trailblazer R21 Award supports new and early-stage investigators pursuing research programs that are of high interest to NIBIB, at the interface of life sciences with engineering and the physical sciences. The award will provide Dong with $400,000 in direct funding over the three-year funding period and roughly $620,000 in total funding.
This project aims to develop implantable airway stents with integrated artificial cilia to overcome the limitations of existing stents, such as tissue ingrowth and cilia impairment, and allow for minimally invasive removal of excess mucus in the airway. This innovation addresses the current challenges of excessive mucus accumulation in patients with central airway obstruction due to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), lung cancer, cystic fibrosis, and other lung conditions.
“If successful, the proposed work could lead to implantable medical devices that save lives and improve the quality of life. Ultimately, these implantable airway stents could pave the way for new therapies for pulmonary diseases and other conditions related to cilia dysfunction,” Dong said.
Dong also is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and a core member of the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering (VISE). His research focus includes developing minimally invasive medical functions of soft miniature robots and medical devices, such as biofluid pumping and targeted biopsy.
The long-term research of the Dong Lab also focuses the design, manufacture and control of miniature swarm robots and their applications in biomedicine and biomechanics, and modeling, design, manufacture and control of intelligent soft materials and devices based on mechanics model and machine learning.
The project is a collaboration between Dong and co-investigators Fabien Maldonado, professor of Medicine, Thoracic Surgery and Mechanical Engineering; and Caitlin Demarest, assistant professor of Thoracic Surgery in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine; and Associate Professor Leon Bellan in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Vanderbilt.
Original article: Vanderbilt University School of Engineering