Le Yu
University of Missouri-Kansas City, MO·Biomedical Engineering
Where cartilage meets bone in a joint, tissue changes gradually from soft and slippery to hard and load-bearing. That transition comes from biomineralization: the controlled deposition of mineral onto and inside collagen fibers.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Materials Science
Engineering
- Topics
biomineralization
osteochondral regeneration
articular cartilage
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Fabricate individual scaffold zones with distinct compositions and collagen fiber orientations by controlling biomimetic mineralization, reproducing the shift from unmineralized cartilage to heavily mineralized subchondral bone.
- Bond the separate zones into a single seamless multizonal scaffold and characterize its microstructure, mineral distribution and mechanical properties against native osteochondral tissue.
- Engineer the subchondral bone zone to contain both intrafibrillar mineral, deposited within collagen fibers, and extrafibrillar mineral on their surfaces, and incorporate sustained local release of functional trace elements.
- Evaluate osteochondral regeneration by seeding the scaffold with chondroprogenitor cells and bone marrow stromal cells carrying fluorescent reporters, tracking zone-specific cartilage versus bone differentiation in culture and tissue formation in vivo.
More about the research
Collagen with no mineral behaves like tendon, collagen packed with mineral behaves like bone, and the graded mineral content in between gives cartilage its particular stiffness profile. When mineral forms in the wrong place, disease follows — calcified blood vessels contribute to clots and atherosclerotic plaques, and calcified joint cartilage signals advancing osteoarthritis. Because this layered structure is so intricate and heals so poorly on its own, damage spanning cartilage and the bone beneath it remains one of the harder problems in orthopedics.
Why it matters
Osteochondral lesions — damaged patches of joint cartilage together with the bone underneath — heal poorly and currently have limited repair options. A scaffold that reproduces the natural gradient of mineral, fiber orientation and stiffness across the joint surface could offer a graft for these injuries, and understanding how mineral deposits on and within collagen may also inform conditions where mineral forms where it should not, such as vascular calcification and osteoarthritis.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sanja Novak
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, AR·Physiology
Evaluate how blood vessels in the synovium and subchondral bone change during OA development. Test whether early microvascular damage or later synovial angiogenesis drives cartilage damage, including after mechanical-stress knee injury.
Anuradha Subramanian
University of Alabama in Huntsville, AL·Biomedical Engineering
Demonstrate whether continuous low-intensity ultrasound (cLIUS) drives mesenchymal stromal cells to form cartilage even in a pro-inflammatory environment, using RNA sequencing to profile the transcriptome and identify the pathways involved.
Li-Hsin Han
Drexel University, PA·Biomedical Engineering
Assess the translation and commercial potential of injectable, light-crosslinkable collagen microribbon scaffolds for knee cartilage repair through I-Corps experiential learning and first-hand study of the industry ecosystem.
The school
University of Missouri-Kansas City: 7 labs on PI Pages, $57M a year on research, 94 research doctorates a year.
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