Assistant Professor
Biomedical and Chemical Engineering
303D Bowne Hall
ywu294@syr.edu
315.443.4891
Lab/ Center/ Institute affiliation –
Bioinspired Institute
Areas of Expertise:
- Synthetic Biomaterials
- Peptide Assembly
- Vaccine Design
- Immunoengineering
The immune system is essential for many aspects of human health, such as, infections, autoimmune conditions, malignancies, and tissue regenerations. While the generations of immune responses are complicated processes that involves wide range of molecular and cellular interactions, many key aspects crucial for protective immune responses have been recently revealed, generating enormous opportunities for therapeutic interventions to greatly improve patient health. Various immune engineering strategies based on biomaterial platforms have shown promise in facilitating immunogenic materials trafficking, modulating cellular interactions, and more. My previous work has also demonstrated several approaches to engineer coordinated cellular and humoral immune responses for augmenting therapeutic responses. The research of our team at Syracuse is aimed at designing biomaterials strategies to delivering molecular stimuli in a temporal and spatial fashion for regulating immune functions. We are particularly interested in harnessing humoral immune responses for therapeutic purpose by regulating the cellular process involved.
Honors and Awards:
- Duke Incubation Fund (Co-PI) 2019
- American Chemical Society Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research Award 2014
Selected Publications:
• Wu Y, Wen H, Bernstein Z, Blakney T, Congdon K, Sampson JH, Sanchez-Perez L, Collier JH, Multi-epitope supramolecular peptide nanofibers eliciting coordinated humoral and cellular antitumor immune responses, Science Advances, 2022 8, eabm7833
• Wu Y, Kelly SH, Sanchez-Perez L, Sampson JH, Collier JH, Comparative study of α-helical and β-sheet self-assembled peptide nanofiber vaccine platforms: Influence of integrated T-cell epitopes, Biomaterial Science, 2020, 8, 3522
• Fries CN, Wu Y, Kelly SH, Wolf M, Votaw NL, Zauscher S, Collier JH, Controlled lengthwise assembly of helical peptide nanofibers to modulate CD8+ T cell responses, Advanced Materials, 2020, 32, 2003310
• Kelly SH, Wu Y, Varadhan AK, Curvino EJ, Chong AS, Collier JH, Enabling Sublingual Peptide Immunization Using Molecular Self-assemblies, Biomaterials, 2020, 241, 119903
• Nelson CE, Wu Y, Gemberling MP, Oliver ML, Waller MA, Bohning JD, Robinson-Hamm JN, Bulaklak K, Castellanos Rivera RM, Collier JH, Asokan A, Gersbach CA, Long-term Evaluation of AAV-CRISPR Genome Editing for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Nature Medicine, 2019, 25, 427
• Wu Y, Norberg PK, Reap EA, Congdon K, Fries C, Kelly SH, Sampson JH, Conticello VP, Collier JH, A supramolecular vaccine platform based on α-helical peptide nanofibers, ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, 2017, 3(12), 3128
• Wu Y, Smith AE, Reineke TM, Lipophilic polycation vehicles display high plasmid DNA delivery to multiple cell types, Bioconjugate Chemistry, 2017, 28, 2035