Failed organs and defective tissues are responsible for $500 billion in medical costs each year. A UM biomedical engineer is working on a new approach to treating these problems.

This issue of Research News begins with the research of David Mooney. A relative newcomer to the UM, he is an assistant professor of dentistry and chemical engineering. Drawing on 20 years of advances in molecular biology, Mooney is fashioning tissues from a combination of living cells and synthetic materials that might someday replace defective or damaged body parts. This "tissue engineering" requires a great deal of detailed engineering work to understand how tissue growth is regulated so that scientists can control that process. Continue Article...