Directs the “Ebong Mechanobiology Laboratory”, where research currently focuses on studying how the mechanical forces of blood flow and tissue stiffness affect endothelial cells, which line the blood vessels and guard them from dysfunction that leads to diseases like atherosclerosis, cancer metastasis, and neurodegeneration. Much of the research focus is on studying the structure and function of the protective gel-like layer of sugar molecules and proteins coating the surface of the endothelial cells—called the glycocalyx—to understand, on a molecular level, how mechanobiology remodels the endothelial cells to facilitate protection from disease. This glycocalyx structure gives endothelial cells the resilience they need to withstand the raucous mechanical environment that they are subjected to, especially due to dynamic blood flows at the vessel branch points. Glycocalyx sheds in the presence of disease, so it is of great interest to study how gradual glycocalyx degradation initiates and promotes pathology. The “Ebong Mechanobiology Laboratory” constructs in vitro fluid-solid systems comprised of endothelial cells co-cultured with support cells, to replicate both healthy and disruptive conditions and to uncover the intricacies of the mechanics-glycocalyx-endothelial cell relationship. This work is combined with live animal studies to assess the validity of the findings, in real disease conditions. Other approaches include biomaterials, state-of-the-art electron microscopy (mainly rapid freezing/freeze substitution preservation and transmission electron microscopy), advanced biological imaging of cells and animals, RNA interference techniques, fluorescent intracellular biomarkers, protein biochemistry, and more. Our discoveries are being applied to the development of therapies and nanomedicine-based drug delivery tools that target mechanobiology, endothelial cells, and the glycocalyx to prevent and/or reverse disease.
- B.S. (Mechanical Engineering) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999
- M.Eng. (Biomedical Engineering) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2001
- Ph.D. (Biomedical Engineering) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2006
- Postdoctoral Fellowship Albert Einstein College of Medicine and CUNY City College of New York, 2007-2012