Affiliation: Northeastern University

Dr. Tengfei He received his PhD in the College of Engineering (2022) from Northeastern University. His doctoral research mainly focused on targeted drug delivery to cartilage for treating osteoarthritis (OA), as local intra-articular (IA) injections of drugs suffer from rapid clearance from the joint space and slow diffusive transport through the dense, avascular cartilage matrix comprised of negatively charged glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). With the goal of using electrostatic interaction for targeted drug delivery, Dr. He synthesized a branched structure by conjugating four 8-arm PEGs to its biotin binding sites while ensuring that its net size remains within the pore size limit of cartilage. This multi-arm Avidin nano-construct or mAv contains 28 sites for covalent conjugation of small-sized drugs. With the test in vitro (cartilage explant model) and in vivo (IA injection in rat), mAv offered itself as a promising charge-based platform for delivering a wide range of small-sized OA drugs for cartilage repair. In addition to his research, Dr. He is a reviewer for the recent research on OA disease and drug delivery for journals like ACS. As a guest editor of this collection, Dr.he wants to help researchers find and establish a good pre-clinical model of OA to enhance the chance of successful clinical translation.