Appointments:
Department of Applied Oral Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry (primary), School of Biomedical Engineering, Faculties of Medicine and Engineering (cross appointment)
Affiliations:
Dalhousie University
Research Interests:
Tissue Engineering, Biomaterials, Organ-on-a-chip, Drug screening platforms, Microbe-mammalian models
I lead a multidisciplinary research team specializing in the development of assays, culture platforms and biomedical devices to understand cell-cell and cell-materials interactions during health and disease states. Ongoing projects include:
- Creation of advanced culture platform to maintain cellular heterogeneity of patient-derived tumour samples
- Chronic lung and oral infection models with complex transport environment to understand host-pathogen interactions.
- Creation of functional biomaterials for oral tissues regeneration.
Our approach combines multiple tissue types, including epithelium, mesenchyme, immune cells and microbial colonies, in a minimalistic fashion to recapitulate tissue level phenomenon, while maintaining the ability to gather meaningful measurements. We are also invested in the creation and adaptation of cutting-edge methods to perturb our engineered tissue models to facilitate our research goals
What brought you to your current institution?
I was recruited to join the Faculty of Dentistry at Dalhousie after my postdoc fellowship at the University of Michigan. I am currently appointed to the School of Biomedical Engineering and have established productive collaborations with members in the BHCRI community.
Hometown: Ottawa, ON
Learn More about my research: www.dal-leunglab.com
Involvement with BHCRI to date:
I am an Associate Member of BHCRI