What area of research does your lab focus on?
Our lab develops innovative material solutions to advance healthcare. The current focus of the group is developing new stimuli-responsive material systems for drug delivery in regenerative medicine and cancer treatment. We are interested in how materials can be designed to reconfigure in response to stimuli, such as light or ultrasound, to provide controlled drug release. Our recent studies have explored a diverse group of materials ranging from solid polymers to hydrogels to nanomaterials.
How does the interdisciplinary aspect of your research enhance your work and add value to it?
The Penn State community is an amazing collaborative environment for our team. Our work sits at the intersection of materials, life science and medicine, and we have collaborators in MRI, the Huck Life Sciences Institutes, the College of Science, the College of Engineering, and the College of Medicine. Our research leverages the materials fabrication and characterization tools and expertise that are available in MRI, the Huck Biotechnology cores and at the Hershey College of Medicine. We work closely with Penn State material scientists such as Urara Hasagawa, Jim Adair, Adri van Duin, Bladimir Ramos, and Lasse Jensen, to refine our material systems.
We also collaborate with biomedical acoustics experts Juli Simon and Yun Jing, who help us to develop ultrasound-responsive materials and translational controlled drug release systems. Our research depends on having strong collaborations with life science researchers and clinical scientists, and we work closely with a number of these researchers including Ibrahim Ozbolat, Dino Ravnic, Neerav Goyal, Joseph Drabick, Aman Dhawan, Doug Stairs, Justin Pritchard, and Adam Glick.
Several of the technologies developed in our lab are licensed to a start-up company, Illuminate Therapeutics, and we have active collaborations with them and other small tech companies in the region.
How does your lab enhance your student's education? Are there any ways that someone might find surprising?
The training in our lab spans from the bench to the bedside. From the earliest explorations and discoveries, I try to guide the students to think of the potential translational impact and the challenges with translating their technology or discovery to the clinic. I want students to think broadly about translation and commercialization. Trainees in the lab should be able to communicate the clinical need, manufacturing concerns, regulatory processes, clinical implementation, and commercial cases.
From the Students
How has the experience working in this lab helped with your education?
"Working in the Hayes Lab has bridged the gap between academics, research, and entrepreneurship. Students have the opportunity to gain first-hand experience at all stages of the research cycle including idea generation, grant writing, materials synthesis, characterization, in vitro cell-based testing, and in vivo evaluation of therapeutic safety or efficacy. Recently, students have worked on biomaterial design at the macroscale by producing layered hydrogels which release cytokines with spatiotemporal control for vascularized bone regeneration. Other students have optimized photo-responsive core-shell-shell nanoparticles which release nucleic acid therapeutics for cancer treatment, inducing 95% tumor volume reductions within 48 hours of treatment. This research lends to student participation in entrepreneurial activities such as the NSF I-Corps program, patent applications, and collaboration with start-up companies or contract research organizations. Working under an advisor who is also an entrepreneur encourages students to think uniquely. Students study how to apply their material-based delivery systems across multiple tissues or tumor types for increased patient applicability during clinical translation. Overall, the education of students in the Hayes Lab is bolstered through mentorship, technical proficiency, and entrepreneurial endeavors with cross-functional teams."
How do you engage with industry, and create connections and collaborations? What are the benefits for both sides - your research and for the company?
The Hayes Lab collaborates with a range of industry partners and maintains active research programs with regional pharmaceutical and med tech startups to characterize and evaluate technologies in their development pipelines. We are also closely engaged with the College of Engineering’s capstone design program through the Learning Factory. Each year, we support industry sponsored student teams by providing access to laboratory space, specialized equipment, and technical expertise to help them meet their design and testing objectives. Our students and postdoctoral researchers benefit greatly from these collaborations, gaining firsthand insight into product development processes, the practical challenges faced by industry teams, and opportunities to build professional networks. In turn, our industry partners gain flexible, cost effective access to scientific expertise and advanced instrumentation, accelerating product development without the burden of maintaining these resources in house.