Associate Professor Bruce Yu

Joint appointment with the School of Pharmacy, University of Maryland Baltimore
Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, 1996.

E-mail: byu@rx.umaryland.edu

Fischell Department of Bioengineering (College Park) contact information:
Room 1130 Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building
Phone: (301) 405-2829

School of Pharmacy (Baltimore) contact information:
Room 635 Health Sciences Facility II
Phone: (410) 706-7514
Fax: (410) 706-5017

Research Interests

Research in my lab has two thrusts: drug delivery and biomaterials engineering. In the drug delivery arena, we are developing enabling technologies for non-invasive collection of drug information in the body (where, how much and in what form). Our approach is to design a class of ¹⁹F imaging tracers (¹⁹FIT) that can be used to label drugs to form a new pharmaceutical entity ¹⁹FIT-drug, which can be tracked and quantified by ¹⁹F MRI. Our long-term goal is drug dose individualization based on in vivo drug information in each patient. In the biomaterials engineering arena, we are developing force-sensitive nano-networks (FSNNs). FSNNs are soft and wet viscoelastic materials assembled from peptides and other biopolymers. MRI probes are incorporated into FSNN so that force-induced transitions in FSNN can be monitored by MRI. Our long-term goal is to construct injectable and biodegradable mechanosensors and drug release matrices to aid the repair and rehabilitation of damaged musculoskeletal tissues.

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Recent Honors and Awards

• Kimmel Scholar Award in cancer research (2004)
• Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for biomaterials research (2005)

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Selected Refereed Publications

Ramachandran, S., Tseng, Y. & Yu, Y.B. (2005) Repeated Rapid Shear-Responsiveness of Peptide Hydrogels with Tunable Shear Modulus. Biomacromolecules, 6, 1316-1321.

Ramachandran, S., Flynn, P., Tseng, Y. & Yu, Y.B. (2005).  Electrostatically Controlled Hydrogelation of Oligopeptides and Protein Entrapment. Chem. Mater. 17, 6583-6588.

Ramachandran, S., Trewhella, J., Tseng, Y. & Yu, Y.B. (2006) Co-assembling Peptide-Based Biomaterials: Effects of Pairing Equal and Unequal Chain Length Oligopeptides. Chem. Mater. 18, 6157-6162.

Ramachandran, S. & Yu, Y.B. (2006) Peptide-Based Viscoelastic Matrices for Drug Delivery and Tissue Repair. BioDrugs, 20, 263-269.

Yu, Y.B. (2006) Fluorocarbon Nanoparticles as Multifunctional Drug Delivery Vehicles. J. Drug Targeting, 14, 663-669.

Jiang, Z-X. & Yu, Y.B. (2007) The Synthesis of a Geminally Perfluoro-tert-butylated β-Amino Acid and its Protected Forms as Potential Pharmacokinetic Modulator and Reporter for Peptide-based Pharmaceuticals. J. Org. Chem. 72, 1464-1467.

Jiang, Z.-X. & Yu, Y.B. (2007) The Design and Synthesis of Highly Branched and Spherically Symmetric Fluorinated Oils and Amphiles.  Tetrahedron, 63, 3982-3988.

Xiao, N.; Jiang, Z.-X. & Yu, Y.B. (2007) Enantioselective Synthesis of (2R, 3S)- and (2S, 3R)-4,4,4-trifluoro-N-Fmoc-O-tert-butyl-threonine and their Racemization-free Incorporation into Oligopeptides via Solid-phase Synthesis. Biopolymers (Pept. Sci.), 88, 781-796, 2007.

Jiang, Z.-X. & Yu, Y.B. (2008) The Design and Synthesis of Highly Branched and Spherically Symmetric Fluorinated Macrocyclic Chelators. Synthesis, 215-220.

Jiang, Z.-X.; Liu, X.; E.K. Jeong & Yu, Y.B. (2009) Symmetry-guided Design and Fluorous Synthesis of a Stable and Rapidly Excreted Imaging Tracer for 19F MRI. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 48, 4755-4758.

Yu, Y.B. (2009) Delivered Dose: A Drug-centric Phenotype for Chemotherapy Dose Individualization. Pharm. Res. 26, 1803-1806.