We share the VISION of EDUCATING ambitious young scientists and engineers to make impacts beyond individual efforts through team projects and collaborative learning in academia and industry.
Understand and control microenvironment impact on chronic liver disease progression. We TRANSLATE technologies and knowledges into solutions for drug development, diagnostics and therapeutics.
Quantitative analysis of the dynamic process of liver regeneration and chronic liver diseases.
Investigating the contraction and propagation mechanism of secretory lumen such as bile canaliculi.
Developing novel and useful biomaterials, cell sources, and analytics for long-term maintenance of highly functional epithelial cells in culture.
Developing robust, scalable, low cost and predictive in vitro drug and toxin testing platforms.
Respect : every TMBL member is important and yet consciously sensitive to other members and the collective impacts. Decisions incorporate inputs from all the stakeholders for fairness and transparency.
Professionalism: every TMBL member strives to attain ever higher quality and standard of her/his own work through mutual empowerment, critique and support to each other.
No-walls culture: solutions to real-life problems can never be confined within artificially-created boundaries (organizational, disciplinary, cultural, inter-personal, or mental inertia).
Sheetz, M., and Yu, H. (2018) The Cell as a Machine, Cambridge University Press, ISBN: 9781107052734.
This unique introductory text has been written by a Lasker Award winning cell biologist; and his PhD student who turned into a biomedical engineer who innovates multiple technologies into award winning companies. It is based on the content and to serve as the text for a course, "Cell as a Machine”, offered by leading universities in the USA and Asia. The course started in 2003 as W3150/4150 in Columbia University, and then taught as course 2.799 in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and MB5101 in National University of Singapore since 2009, which was extended in different years to Penn, Georgia Tech, UIUC, UC Berkeley/San Diego/Irvine/Davis/Merced, City College of New York, Minnesota, Wash U St Louis, Wisconsin, Boston U and Texas A&M in the US, Hong Kong UST and Zhejiang University in Asia.
The text explains cell functions using the engineering principles of robust devices. Adopting a process-based approach to understanding cell and tissue biology, it describes the molecular and mechanical features that enable the cell to be robust in operating its various components, and explores the ways in which molecular modules respond to environmental signals to execute complex functions. The design and operation of a variety of complex functions are covered, including engineering lipid bilayers to provide fluid boundaries and mechanical controls, adjusting cell shape and forces with dynamic filament networks, and DNA packaging for information retrieval and propagation. Numerous problems, case studies and application examples help readers connect theory with practice, and solutions for instructors and videos of lectures accompany the book online. Assuming only basic mathematical knowledge, this is an invaluable resource for graduate and senior undergraduate students taking single-semester courses in cell mechanics, biophysics, mechanobiology, and cell/tissue biology from a fresh perspective.
Uniquely links together the biology, biophysics, and engineering principles underlying cell functions
Avoids complex mathematical treatments, making it accessible to students with only a basic mathematical background
Additional information about many of the functions described in the book can be found online at www.mechanobio.info
Wu, X., Raymond, J.J., Liu, Y., Odermatt, A.J., Sin, W.-X., Teo, D.B.T., Natarajan, M., Ng, I.C., Birnbaum, M.E., Lu, T.K., Han, J, Springs, S.L., and Yu, H. (2025) Rapid Universal Detection of High-Risk and Low-Abundance Microbial Contaminations in CAR-T Cell Therapy. Small Methods, 30 March 2025; 2500253.. doi: 10.1002/smtd.202500253
Live microbial contamination poses high risks to cell and gene therapies, threatening manufacturing processes and patient safety. Rapid, sensitive detection of live microbes in complex environments, such as CAR‐T cell cultures, remains an urgent need. Here, an innovative sample‐to‐result workflow is introduced using digital loop‐mediated isothermal amplification (dLAMP), enhanced by Electrostatic Microfiltration (EM)‐based enrichment, for rapid sterility testing. By rationally designing primers targeting 16S and 18S rRNA, dLAMP assay enables both universal detection (covering >80% of known species) and strain‐specific identification of bacterial and fungal contaminants in CAR‐T cell spent medium and final products, directly from microorganism lysates. Enhanced by EM‐based enrichment of low‐abundance live microbes, the workflow achieves unparalleled sensitivity and speed, detecting contamination levels as low as 1 CFU/mL in complex CAR‐T cell cultures within 6 h. Compared to qPCR and 14‐day compendial methods, the approach demonstrates superior accuracy and significantly faster turnaround times. This workflow holds transformative potential for real‐time monitoring in cell therapy manufacturing and rapid safety assessments of CAR‐T cell products prior to patient infusion. Beyond cell therapy, the method is broadly applicable to infectious disease diagnostics, biomanufacturing monitoring, food safety, and environmental surveillance.
Zhou, H., Loo, L.S.W., Ong, F.Y.T., Lou, X., Wang, J., Myint, M.K., Thong, A., Seow, D.C.S., Wibowo, M., Ng, S., Lv, Y., Kwang, L.G., Bennie, R.Z., Pang, K.T., Dobson, R.C.J., Domigan, L.J., Kanagasundaram, Y., and Yu, H. (2025) Cost-effective Production of Meaty Aroma from Porcine Cells for Hybrid Cultivated Meat. Food Chemistry, 1 May 2025; 473: 142946. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.142946.
Cultivated meats are typically hybrids of animal cells and plant proteins, but their high production costs limit their scalability. This study explores a cost-effective alternative by hypothesizing that controlling the Maillard and lipid thermal degradation reactions in pure cells can create a meaty aroma that could be extracted from minimal cell quantities. Using spontaneously immortalized porcine myoblasts and fibroblasts adapted to suspension culture with a 1 % serum concentration, we developed a method to isolate flavor precursors via freeze thawing. Thermal reaction conditions were optimized to enhance aroma compound production. Chemical profiling demonstrates that myoblasts produce an aroma profile closer to pork meat than fibroblasts, although serum reduction decreased aroma yield. Sensory analysis supported these findings. Incorporating the optimized aroma extract – derived from just 1.2 % (w/w) cells – into plant proteins resulted in a hybrid cultivated meat with 78.5 % sensory similarity to pork meat, but with a significant 80 % reduction in production costs.
Bennie, R.Z., Ogilvie, O.J., Loo, L.S.W., Zhou, H., Ng, S.K., Jin, A., Trlin, H.J.F., Wan, A., Yu, H., Domigan, L.J., and Dobson, R.C.J. (2025) A risk-based approach can guide safe cell line development and cell banking for scaled-up cultivated meat production. Nature Food, 3 January 2025; 6: 25-30. doi: 10.1038/s43016-024-01085-9.
For commercial viability, cultivated meats require scientifcally informed approaches to identify and manage hazards and risks. Here we discuss food safety in the rapidly developing feld of cultivated meat as it shifts from lab-based to commercial scales. We focus on what science-informed risk mitigation processes can be implemented from neighbouring felds. We case-study pre-market safety assessments from UPSIDE Foods, GOOD Meat and Vow Group using publicly available dossiers. Quality control and safety assurance practices need to be established and standardized for cell lines and food-grade cell banks.
