Tissue Engineering Strategies for Elucidating Osteosarcoma Biology and Drug Discovery

Fan Yang, PhD is an Associate Professor at Stanford University with joint appointments in the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering joins OsteoBites to discuss her work on tissue engineering strategies for elucidating OS biology and drug discovery.Fan Yang, PhD is the founder and Director of Stanford Stem Cells and Biomaterials Engineering Laboratory, and also Co-director of Stanford NIH Biotechnology Training Program. Her research seeks to develop hydrogels with unique micro- and nano- scale properties to promote stem cell differentiation, tissue regeneration and immunomodulation, with a focus on musculoskeletal diseases. Her lab also harnesses biomaterials to create 3D cancer models with in vivo-mimicking phenotype and drug responses. Such 3D models could enable discovering novel druggable targets that would otherwise be missed using conventional 2D culture, and enable high-throughput drug screening with reduced cost and time than animal models. Prior to joining Stanford, Dr. Yang received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT under Prof. Robert Langer. In recognition of her innovation, she has been recognized by numerous awards including Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, MIT TR35 Global list honoree, National Science Foundation CAREER award, Young Investigator Award from Society for Biomaterials, Biomaterials Science Lectureship Award, Young Investigator award from Alliance for Cancer and Gene Therapy, Ellen Weaver Award by the Association for Women in Science, Baxter Faculty Scholar Award, the McCormick Faculty Award, Stanford Asian American Faculty Award, and the Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award, etc.